Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, Cottbus, May 2009

On the International Propagation of the Melan Arch System since 1892

Holger Eggemann
H + P Ingenieure GmbH & Co. KG, Aachen, Germany

Karl-Eugen Kurrer
Ernst & Sohn, Berlin, Germany

ABSTRACT: The Melan arch system began in 1892 as a system for building vaulted floors, but it soon became
common for building concrete arch bridges. The particular feature of this system is the combination of steel
arch ribs, so-called rigid reinforcement, and concrete vaults. The transfer of knowledge and means took place
from the very first moment of its invention. The Melan system was exported from Europe to the United States,
was very successfully copied by the Spanish engineer Ribera around 1900 and was also taken to Japan by
Japanese engineers who were sent to Europe in the last decade of the nineteenth century. This paper traces
the different connections and identifies three main phases of this successful invention. Today, the Melan sys-
tem is state of the art or common knowledge for bridge-builders all over the world, who appreciate the tech-
nological advantage of simple and rapid erection.

INTRODUCTION
The Melan system was patented in 1892 as a form of suspended floor construction (Melan 1892). The particular
feature of this system is the combination of steel arch ribs, so-called rigid reinforcement, and concrete vaults.
The inventor of the system, Joseph Melan (1853–1941), was an outstanding authority in Austrian bridge-building
theory and practice. In 1886, at the age of just 33, he was appointed to the post of Professor for Structural Me-
chanics and Graphical Statics in Brno; nine years later he switched to the Chair of Bridge-Building, and from
1902 to 1923 occupied the same chair at the German Technical University in Prague, see (Emperger 1941, p.
110) and (Kurrer 2008, p. 749). The invention of the Melan arch took place in close collaboration with the activi-
ties of the Austrian Engineers and Architects Association (ÖIAV), whose First Arch Committee carried out the
first tests in 1893 (n.n. 1895).

PHASE I: INVENTION AND INNOVATION

During the innovation phase the Melan system was primarily used for constructing suspended floors, and only
later used for bridges – and then only in isolated cases. Although it represented only one of the many sus-
pended floor systems in use for buildings, the Melan system found favour among a number of clients and struc-
tural engineers because of its very high load-carrying capacity, far exceeding that of the Monier floors that
were becoming popular at that time.

The role of the First Arch Committee (1889–1890)

The significance of the First Arch Committee for the development of the Melan system has been investigated
by Eggemann and Kurrer (Eggemann; Kurrer 2005a). The collaboration between Adolf Freiherr von Pittel (1838–
1900) and the engineer Viktor Brausewetter (1845–1926) in reinforced concrete applications encouraged
Brausewetter to carry out the first tests on plain concrete arches at his works in Bratislava as early as 1879
(Brausewetter 1925, p. 213). In 1889 Brausewetter persuaded the ÖIAV to carry out tests on the vaulted floor
systems in common use at that time. To do this, an Arch Committee was set up, and Joseph Melan was one of
its members. The committee published the results in a report (n.n. 1895).
 Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, May 2009

Melan’s Patent
Motivated by his work on the Arch Committee, Melan submitted a patent application to the governing au-
thorities in Brno on 20 December 1891: “A new type of floor construction essentially consisting of the combina-
tion of iron arch ribs and concrete vaults” (Melan 1892). “The essence of the floor construction consists ... of the
combination of iron arch ribs and a concrete vault, with the latter being properly reinforced. This reinforce-
ment is then especially important when a non-uniformly distributed load on the floor would cause tensile
stresses ... Further, the arch ribs enable a simple fixing of the shuttering timbers for casting the concrete vault,
so a special scaffolding is totally unnecessary, even for longer spans” (Melan 1892). Fig. 1 shows the most im-
portant constructional details of Melan’s suspended floor system. The patent application already embodied all
the advantages that would emerge in the floor’s further development into the Melan system (at the end of the
innovation phase) and prove their worth immediately in the building of reinforced concrete arch bridges
(Brausewetter 1925, p. 250).

One test and the first structures

During the summer of 1893 the Vault Committee carried out an additional test on a Melan arch. The test as-
sembly could not be made to fail under a symmetrical loading, and it required an asymmetric loading to in-
duce failure (Fig. 2). The arch according to the Melan system supported three to four times the loading of the
other test assemblies (n.n. 1895). This test earned the Melan system official recognition; an important step on
the path to further applications had been taken.

Figure 1 (left): Drawing from Melan’s patent; (Melan 1892)

Figure 2 (right): Melan arch after failure; (n.n. 1895)

The collaboration between the engineering scientist Joseph Melan and the industrialist Viktor Brausewetter re-
sulted in the use of Melan arches, first in buildings, later in bridges. As early as 1892, Joseph Melan had as-
signed the licence for Austria-Hungary and Germany to Viktor Brausewetter. By 1894 the Pittel & Brausewetter
company had erected 100 000 m² of Melan floors for factories and warehouses plus three smaller road bridges
in Bohemia according to Melan’s patent (Emperger 1894, pp. 456-457).

PHASE II: DIFFUSION

The close ties between science and industry – represented here by Joseph Melan and Viktor Brausewetter –
enabled Melan’s invention to be introduced into everyday building (innovation phase). However, the transi-
tion from the innovation to the diffusion of the Melan system throughout the European bridge-building market
could not be completed without the endorsement of the authorities, which were normally involved in approv-
ing the building of larger bridges, plus corresponding standards for the calculations (Kurrer 2003). During the
innovation phase it was primarily the high load-carrying capacity of the Melan system, as an appealing struc-
tural/constructional criterion, that helped it to stand out against rival suspended floor systems. Now a techno-
logical criterion was added to this which made a decisive contribution to helping the Melan system gain ac-
ceptance in the bridge-building market: Melan bridges did not require any temporary works during
construction. The USA therefore took the lead first in the building of Melan bridges; in Europe it was the Spanish
bridge-building market where a variation of the Melan system became established. In the other European
countries Melan bridges played only a subsidiary role. And the heyday of great reinforced concrete arch
bridges in the 1930s plus the scarcity of steel for construction forced the Melan system into a hibernation from
which it would not awake until the late 1970s.
Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, May 2009

United States of America

The Melan system spread quickly across the United States, where the use of reinforced concrete for bridges did
not become established through the application of Joseph Monier’s patents, as in Europe, but rather via the
Melan system. According to Edwin Thacher, in the period between 1894 and 1904 some 300 Melan bridges
were built in the USA by the New York Concrete-Steel Engineering Company alone, see (Thacher 1905, p. 53)
and (Gasparini 2003, p. 332). Fritz von Emperger (1862–1942) and Edwin Thacher (1839–1920) were key figures in
the early days of reinforced concrete construction in the USA. It was the Austrian civil engineer Emperger in
particular who made a vital contribution to establishing the Melan system in the US bridge-building market
(Emperger 1894). The construction history of the years 1894–1904 has also been investigated by Gasparini
(Gasparini 2003), and Eggemann and Kurrer have thrown light on the further developments (Eggemann; Kurrer
2006). According to an estimate by Spangenberg, more than 5000 bridges had been built with rigid rein-
forcement in the USA by 1924 (Spangenberg 1925, p. 503). In the next years the application of the Melan sys-
tem enjoyed its heyday worldwide; some of the concrete arch bridges that at the time of their completion
were the longest in the world made use of rigid reinforcement. For example, the three arches of the F. W.
Cappelen Memorial Bridge across the Mississippi in Minneapolis. The bridge was named after the first project
engineer, Frederick William Cappelen, who died during the planning. The centre arch spans 122 m, which was
a world record when the bridge was completed in 1923 (Fig. 3).

Figure 3: F. W. Cappelen Memorial Bridge during construction;

inset: the old bridge, the piers of which were retained; (n.n. 1923, fig. 4)

Melan bridges in Austria and neighbouring countries

Emperger wrote about his successes with the Melan system in the USA in the journal of the ÖIAV (Emperger
1895; 1896) and therefore speeded up the establishment of the Melan system in Austria. Melan was the de-
signer and Brausewetter the contractor for the first larger bridge in Austria, the Schwimmschul Bridge in Steyr
with a span of 42 m, which was built in 1897/98 (Fig. 4). Melan completed numerous bridges together with the
Pittel & Brausewetter company, e.g. in Ljubljana, Payerbach, Bielitz and Döberney (Melan 1911, Preface); in It-
aly bridges were built over the Polcevera near Genoa and over the Tagliamento near Pinzano (Spitzer; Nowak
1908, p. 68f.). Eggemann and Kurrer have provided a detailed review of the developments in Austria (Egge-
mann; Kurrer 2005a). Bridges known to have been designed by Melan are the Chauderon-Montbenon Bridge
in Lausanne and the Kaiser Franz Josef Bridge in Ljubljana (now called the Dragon Bridge). Both still remain in
full use.
In Switzerland none other than Robert Maillart expressed criticism of the Melan system (Maillart 1936). He
stressed the risk of poor adhesion between the concrete and the steel sections. He suggested this adhesion
might break down, especially under the effects of vibrations and thermal stresses, and the steel would then
corrode. This technical reasoning was certainly justified because composite action was still not fully understood
at this time, but was assumed by Melan in his calculations. Maillart therefore preferred pure reinforced con-
crete construction. A reanalysis of the Melan bridge (completed in 1929) over the River Sieg near Bonn in 2007,
necessitated by the growing volume of traffic, resulted in the need for temporary strengthening; as Maillart
had feared, the concrete had parted from the steel sections in some places (Goralski; Eggemann 2008). Mail-
lart also introduced economic arguments, which can certainly be regarded as patriotic. He felt it would be
 Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, May 2009

better to use round steel bars produced in the country rather than imported steel sections, and the domestic
timber industry would be thankful for the immense consumption of timber for the centering required for pure
reinforced concrete, which is not needed in the Melan system (Maillart 1936, p. 158).

Figure 4 (left): Schwimmschul Bridge in Steyr, Austria; (Nowak 1923)

Figure 5 (right): San Telmo Bridge in Seville; (Ribera 1932, p. 87)

The Ribera system in Spain – perfectionism or plagiarism?

Developments in Spain have been examined by Bernabeau and Eggemann and Kurrer, see (Bernabeu et al.
2005) and (Eggemann; Kurrer 2005b). As a licensee of Hennebique, the Spanish engineer José Eugenio Ribera
was familiar with the patents for reinforced concrete construction at the close of the nineteenth century and
was granted a patent in Spain for a variation on the Melan system (Ribera 1902a). That secured him a signifi-
cant share of the Spanish bridge-building market after 1902. Ribera’s system developed the technological
possibilities inherent in the Melan system and implemented them in everyday bridge-building. Ribera thus be-
came the key person during the diffusion phase of the Melan system in Spain – the same historic role that
Emperger and Thacher had experienced a few years before in the USA with great success. Like no one else
before him, Ribera recognised and used the technological advantage of the concrete arch with rigid rein-
forcement, i.e. the complete elimination of temporary works when concreting the arch. The difference be-
tween his system and the Melan system, of which he was certainly well aware, was the resolve with which Rib-
era combined this technological benefit with the structural/constructional benefit of the higher load-carrying
capacity of the concrete arch with rigid reinforcement. Between 1902 and 1935 Ribera was responsible for
about 300 arch bridges with rigid reinforcement in Spain (Ribera 1928). One well-known example is the San
Telmo Bridge in Seville. Fig. 5 shows the centre section of the steel arch being lifted into position with a floating
crane, a method that is still used today in Japan (see Fig. 9).
Ribera initially explained the similarity with the Melan system as a perfection of the latter. In 1902 he presented
his patent in the Revista de Obras Públicas and added: “These are the arrangements that, perfecting the
Melan system, in my opinion will solve the problem in the most practical way” (Ribera 1902b, p. 390). This quo-
tation explains the similarity between the two systems and proves that Ribera was familiar with the Melan sys-
tem. Some 30 years later Ribera said: “It was subsequently discovered that the Austrian engineer Melan had
used the same method for a number of bridges; known as the Melan system, this method became widespread
in Germany and America, however, with fewer advantages than in Spain because in those countries timber
for building purposes is much cheaper” (Ribera 1928, p. 345; 1932, p. 73). Ribera certainly wanted to deflect at-
tention from the fact that his system exhibits great similarities with that of Melan and these days is quite rightly
seen as a successful plagiarism.
The viaduct carrying the Zamora–Orense–La Coruña railway line over the River Esla in north-west Spain was
planned in the early 1930s by the Spanish engineer Martín Gil as a reinforced concrete arch spanning 210 m.
The Spanish Civil War interrupted the work on site and when work resumed the timber centering was no longer
in an adequate state to carry the loads. Eduardo Torroja, a former student of Ribera and involved with the
continuation of the project, suggested erecting a self-supporting steel arch and casting the concrete around
this (Castella et al. 1942; 1943). The bridge was completed in 1942 and at the time was the longest concrete
arch bridge in the world (Fig. 6).

Germany – further development of the Melan system by Heinrich Spangenberg

Heinrich Spangenberg (1879–1936) explained the advantages of the Melan system during a presentation at
the annual meeting of the German Concrete Society in 1924. However, he did criticise the Melan system for its
unequal distribution of stresses between concrete and steel, caused by the inevitable section-by-section con-
creting of the arch on larger bridges. The sections concreted first are subjected to an undesirable, higher pre-
load due to the weight of the wet concrete of the later sections. In order to avoid this effect, Spangenberg
proposed preloading the steel arch with gravel as ballast to match the weight of the concrete of the arch
cross-section. In this way only the steel arch would be prestressed and the concrete cross-section would be re-
lieved of all prestress (Spangenberg 1924, pp. 503–504). This method was used in 1929 during the construction
of the Echelsbacher Bridge over the River Ammer in Bavaria, a project in which Heinrich Spangenberg acted
as a technical consultant for the authorities. The arch has two hinges, spans 130 m and rises 31.8 m. Fig. 7
shows the steel arches with some of the formwork already in place.
Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, May 2009

Figure 6 (left): Esla Viaduct near Zamora; (Torroja 2000, p. 295)

Figure 7 (right): Echelsbacher Bridge during construction; (Duell; Gerhardt 1931, p. 57)

The last Melan Bridge to be built in Germany before World War 2 was the Ludwig Bridge over the River Isar in
Munich, completed in 1935 (Fig. 8). It connects Isartorplatz with Rosenheimer Strasse on the route to the mo-
torway south-east of the city and was assigned the very highest priority within the scope of the national mo-
torway programme. Predictably, the opening of the bridge for traffic was thoroughly exploited by the National
Socialist government for propaganda purposes (Rädlinger 2008, p. 175ff.). Afterwards, the Melan system dis-
appeared from construction work in Germany. Raw materials, steel especially, started to become scarce in
Germany in 1936. And starting in 1938, the deployment of workers and building materials was controlled cen-
trally and everything was subsidiary to Germany’s preparations for war. Large spans were avoided in the mo-
torway network and stone arches were preferred for bridges. Cross-sections with cast-in rolled steel sections
were regarded as uneconomic (Schaechterle 1942, pp. 32-33). As a consequence of these measures, no fur-
ther Melan arches were built. After the war, composite bridge construction, a subdiscipline of structural steel-
work, asserted itself in Germany (Kleineberg 1950) and research initially focused on beam bridges and the as-
sociated superstructures.

Figure 8: Ludwig Bridge in Munich; (Rädlinger 2008, p. 178)

PHASE III – REDISCOVERY

It was not until the 1980s that composite steel-concrete construction, as a subdiscipline of structural steelwork,
managed to establish its constructional language and finally divorce itself from reinforced concrete construc-
tion. This was the prerequisite for the rediscovery of the Melan system. It was the principles of composite con-
struction that enabled the technological development potential of the Melan system to be fully realised for
the building of arch bridges. This creative adaptation of the Melan system to composite bridge construction
was first used in Japan in the late 1970s, and became established there for the building of arch bridges some
10 years later (Eggemann; Kurrer 2006, p. 918) – since 1993 in China, too (Zhou; Zhu 1997, p. 162).

New erection methods in Japan

During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Japanese Meiji government dispatched engineers to
Europe and the USA in order to study new technical developments. This resulted in the amazing story that as
early as 1894 Prof. Sakuro Tanabe was able to compare the Monier and Melan systems in a lecture – not long
after their appearance (Nakajima; Kurita 2005). The first Melan bridge in Japan, designed by Sakuro Tanabe,
 Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, May 2009

was built in Kyoto in 1903. The bridge is still in good condition today and has a memorial stone (Eggemann;
Kurrer 2006, p. 918). The Melan system is used in Japan today solely because of the advantages during erec-
tion. Since the end of the 1970s more than 20 bridges have been built with Melan arches. In Japan they distin-
guish between three different developments (Nakajima; Kurita 2005):
1. Pylon and Melan method
2. Truss and Melan method
3. Concrete lapping with pre-erected composite arch (CLCA)

In the first and second methods, between one-sixth and one-third of the arch is built cantilevering out from the
abutments, either guyed back to a temporary pylon or supported by temporary diagonals between the piers
supporting the deck. Afterwards the middle part of the arch, constructed using the Melan method, is lifted into
position and the concrete cast in situ. One example of cantilevers plus temporary pylon is the Kashirajima
Bridge (2002). The arch spans more than 220 m and the 130 m long Melan central section – just like Ribera in
Seville – was lifted into position with a floating crane (Fig. 9).
The third method, CLCA, stands for “concrete lapping with pre-erected composite arch”. In this method a
steel arch constructed from hollow sections is erected first. Once complete, the steel hollow sections are filled
with concrete. The composite cross-section is now effective and can carry the concreting loads of the com-
plete arch cross-section, which in turn supports the columns for the deck (Eggemann; Kurrer 2006, p. 918–919).
Prof. Kurita has emphasized the great advantage of the Melan arch from the erection viewpoint. In the final
condition, the bridge is always seen as a concrete bridge.

China – concrete-filled tubular arch bridges

In China concrete-filled trussed arches are preferred for arch bridges with long spans, a development that
started about 15 years ago [Zhou; Zhu 1997]. The use of these cross-sections for bridges was a by-product of
decades of research into the load-carrying capacity of concrete-filled hollow sections, which are used to
great effect in China for industrial structures, underground railway platforms and electricity transmission masts.
The latter application, in the form of the Motor-Columbus system, has been used in Europe since the 1940s
(Eggemann 2003, p. 22). Zhou and Zhu report on 14 bridges in China (Zhou; Zhu 1997), six of them built as con-
crete arch bridges with a cast-in trussed framework of concrete-filled hollow sections (Concrete Filled Steel Tu-
bular-Method = CFST-Method). The finished cross-section forms a hollow box of concrete with rigid reinforce-
ment. The steel tube arches can be erected using the vertical swing method or the horizontal swing method
with counterweights (Fig. 10). The authors do not mention the Melan method, but say that this type of bridge
has been the result of intensive research into concrete-filled hollow steel sections over the past 30 years.

Figure 9 (left): Kashirajima Bridge; (DYWIDAG 2005, p. 11), see also Fig. 5
Figure 10 (right): Xialao River Bridge during horizontal swing; (Zhou; Zhu 1997, p. 163)

Currently, the second-longest arch bridge in the world is the Wanxian Bridge over the Yangtze, which spans
425 m (Ewert 2003, p. 194ff.). Several bridge forms were investigated for this long span – suspension bridge,
steel arch, post-tensioned concrete frame – and the reinforced concrete arch was considered to be the best
solution. A trussed arch of hollow sections was erected first and the sections then filled with concrete. This
composite cross-section then supports the loads of the subsequent section-by-section concreting of the con-
crete hollow box cross-section (Yan; Yang 1997, p. 165). At the 1st Chinese-Croatian Colloqium on Arch Bridges
in Brijuni Islands, 10-14 July 2008, Zlatko Šavor and Jelena Bleiziffer report on 6 new CFST bridges in China
(Šavor; Bleiziffer 2008, p. 355):
– Yajisha Bridge, 360 m span (2000)
– Nanning Yonghe Bridge, 335 m span (2004)
– Wushan Bridge, 460 m span (2005)
– Maocaojie Bridge, 368 m span (2006)
– Huangshan Taipinghu Bridge, 336 m span (2007)
– Liancheng Bridge, 400 m span (2007)
The longest arch bridge is now the Wushan Bridge, which spans 460 m.
Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, May 2009

New Melan bridges in the Alps

In mountainous regions the Melan system offers huge benefits because the costs of centering are dispropor-
tionately high and, furthermore, the centering would be at risk of sudden flooding. Since the beginning of the
1990s three bridges have been built in Italy, Austria and Switzerland, and these have all been described in en-
gineering publications. In Italy the bridge concerned is the one over the Sarca, near Villa Rendena in the
Trento region; the Italian engineer Armando Mammino was responsible for the design (Mammino 1996, p. 786).
In this case it was the risk of flooding that was critical for the choice of structure. In Austria the Melan system
has once again found an inroad into Austrian bridge-building through an ingenious adaptation by civil engi-
neer Peter Schallaschek (Schallaschek 2003). His Stampfgraben Bridge (Fig. 11) was awarded the Austrian En-
gineering Prize in 2004 for its combination of economy and elegance. The same method of construction had
been used previously in Switzerland by Köppel and Walser (Köppel; Walser 1991). In that project the existing
bridge over the Urnäsch was replaced by a new arch spanning 143 m (Fig. 12). The authors stress the similarity
with the Melan system and regard their contribution as a new method of building concrete arch bridges,
which in turn is very similar to the Japanese CLCA method developed previously. Although these three exam-
ples are not directly related, they show, however, that the use of the Melan arch in recent years is based on
the rediscovery of hitherto buried historical structural engineering knowledge and the fact that the benefits of
the Melan arch are acutely relevant when bridging deep valleys. In mathematical terms, we can postulate
that this form of construction is the solution of a variational problem; the chain of logic is as follows: deep val-
ley – concrete arch bridge – self-supporting formwork – steel arch as reinforcement – swung steel arch.

Figure 11(left): Stampfgraben Bridge; (photo: P. Schallaschek)

Figure 12 (right): Hundwilertobel Bridge; (Köppel; Walser 1991, p. 254)

CONCLUSION
The Melan system was originally appreciated for its high load-carrying capacity. But very soon its technologi-
cal advantages for practical operations on site became just as highly regarded as its structural/constructional
merits. Those on-site advantages led to a significant improvement in the economy and industry-type organisa-
tion of bridge-building sites:
– Increasing the degree of prefabrication through the factory fabrication of the steel Melan arches led to a
new level of control of the engineering in the building process.
– Replacing the timber centering by steel Melan arches enabled the costs of labour and materials to be sub-
stantially reduced for the entire structure.
– Speeding up the work on site helped to meet the “time-is-money” demands that had been infiltrating the
building industry since the Industrial Revolution.

The fact that the Melan system was first adopted in the US bridge-building market in the years 1894–1900 (diffu-
sion phase) – and not in Europe – was initially due to the lack of appropriate building regulations in continental
Europe. Only after the success of the Melan system in the USA were the first larger bridges built in Austria. The
success of the Ribera system in Spain is due, in the end, to the synthesis of three perspectives in Ribera’s think-
ing, who was active as a civil engineer in society’s sectors of science, industry and administration: i.e. the per-
spective of the engineering scientist/designer, the perspective of the entrepreneur/contractor, and the per-
spective of public authorities (Kurrer 2008, p. 511ff.). Nevertheless, Ribera was more an entrepreneurial
engineer than an engineering scientist like Melan, who in the first place saw the structural/constructional ad-
vantages of his system. This was why in Europe the Melan system first asserted itself in the Spanish bridges mar-
ket (and gained a considerable market share there) right at the start of the twentieth century in the form of the
Ribera system with a strong emphasis on the technological side, whereas in Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy
and Switzerland the Melan system was just one of several reinforced concrete systems competing for a share
 Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Construction History, May 2009

of the market. For example, as early as 1908 the Handbuch für Eisenbeton counted no fewer than five different
arch bridge systems with rigid reinforcement, named after their inventors: Wünsch, Melan, Ribera, Emperger
and Möller (Spitzer 1908, p. 79). Spangenberg was first able to develop the Melan system further as the ration-
alisation movement took hold in Germany in the 1920s. But after 1936 the Melan system was forced out of the
German market by the unconditional call to save steel as Hitler’s war preparations advanced.
As the new developments in the Alps and especially Japan and China show, there is now substantial renewed
interest in reinforced concrete arch bridges, first of all with round reinforcing bars. It is during the planning and
design phases that the economic advantages of the arch bridge based on the Melan system in particular es-
pecially and “hybrid arch bridges of steel and concrete” (Weißbach 2006) in general – compared to conven-
tional reinforced concrete arch bridges – come to light. This advantage is particularly evident when bridging
deep valleys and when long spans are required. However, the chance of reanimating the Melan system first
arose after the establishment of composite steel-concrete construction for beam bridges, after the develop-
ment of suitable shear studs and after devising adequate design procedures. As the examples from Japan
and China illustrate, the new forms of construction, e.g. CLCA, evolved out of R&D work on composite con-
struction. By taking a holistic view of difficult bridge-building tasks with long spans, this method is quasi a solu-
tion to a “mathematically formulated” variational problem. A special form of design became a special form
of construction: the history of the evolution of the Melan system from 1892 to the present day is a good exam-
ple of the change from the structural/constructional to the technological paradigms in bridge-building.

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