how were bridges designed before, say 1850, sometimes way before, able to handle the weight of a ww2 tank?
Were they overbuilt by orders of magnitude, miracle of the arch, or something else?
In: Engineering
yes; many things are overbuilt, even on accident without knowing the future. Many stone bridges from colonial/victorian (and before) days could support a lot more weight than the average carriage or full farm wagon of the time…..now, did they build it knowing that in 100 years a metal tank would drive over it?? likely not.
then there is the reverse side of engineering; where the tank designers can say, these are the major bridges in the area and their dimensions…..so lets build tanks that arent wider than these bridges we’ll likely encounter
fun story: Joseph Bazalgrette was in charge of building london’s sewers………he basically said “lets only do this once and double the diameter of the pipes planned” this decision has allowed the sewers to last a lot longer than the original pipes would have allowed due to the increasing populatioj
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