How do engineers account for continental drift when building bridges and tunnels?

Question

How do engineers account for continental drift when building bridges and tunnels?

In: 8

Answer 1

They don’t build for continental drift, but they do design for seismic, traffic and thermal movements. Most solid deck bridges have rollers or sliding plates that allow the anchorages and deck to move relative to each other and not collapse.

Those large plates going across the roadway? Those are expansion plates that allow the bridge to move and shift without collapsing.