 | Such an arch was never built, with a span of 160 m, using a relatively new material and the constructed without using a framework directly supported by the ground.
The design and construction of the bridge introduced many technological innovations, even in the analysis methods.
|
| 
| 
|
By that time engineers knew how to deal with statically indeterminate continuous beams. But the Force Method appropriated to calculate this kind of structure has been published in 1874, the year of the design of this bridge. (In fact the method was published 10 years earlier by Maxwell without attracting engineers attention).
In fact we believe that this was the first case of the analysis of a statically indeterminate structures (without being a beam), and that Eiffel discovered the method by itself.