Concrete bridges are a type of bridge, constructed out of concrete. They started to appear widely in the early 20th century.

History

Unreinforced concrete has been used in bridge construction since antiquity: the Romans incorporated concrete cores into a number of their masonry bridges and aqueducts, along with constructing spanning water conduits of concrete. From the late 18th century cast iron framed bridges may have had an unreinforced cast concrete deck, or had their structure encased in concrete, for example the Homersfield Bridge, constructed between 1869 and 1870, between the English counties of Suffolk and Norfolk. In 1873, Frenchman Joseph Monier obtained a French patent for a method of iron-wire reinforced concrete bridge construction; his first iron-wire reinforced concrete bridge was constructed across the moat of the marquis de Tillièrein's fr:Château de Chazelet, in 1875. This and all later bridges made according to Monier's system patterned the construction of previously used stone bridges. Their main structural unit was an arch barrel. All barrel sections were reinforced similarly, regardless of the forces acting on it. The longest steel reinforced bridge, in 2024, is the 600 m Tian'e Longtan Bridge, Guangxi Zhuang, China. The US's longest unreinforced concrete span, is the 200 ft arch of the, 1910, Rocky River Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio. Early extant examples include:

Finland

France

United Kingdom

United States