US20 Mississippi River Bridge Photosimulations Iowa DOT, Dubuque, Iowa The Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT) planned to expand US20 by adding two additional lanes to the highway at the crossing of the Mississippi River in Dubuque Iowa. The existing two lane crossing utilized an arched truss making widening impractical. The new lanes would have to be carried on a new structure adjacent to the original. POITRA Visual provided photo-realistic simulations of multiple bridge design concepts for the proposal to Iowa DOT. Five alternate bridge designs were illustrated in order to more easily discuss the aesthetic considerations of using dis-similar structure types.

POITRA Visual modelers created each alternate bridge type as a 3D model for use in the simulations.

Photosimulations 5 4 3 2 1 E Mouse-over Images. 1. Aerial Photosimulation of Proposed Structure Concept: Truss arch alternative for the main-span and two approach spans to match the original.

Since the original stucture will remain in use very after the new structure is built very little work needed to be done to the Engineer provided base photograph. POITRA Visual's 3D modelers used the Engineer's concept design plans to create 3D models of each of the structure alternatives, which were then camera matched, lighted, rendered and composited with the new base photograph. The bridge design backgrounds of the POITRA Visual principals greatly expidited this process. Graphic artists at POITRA also created rendered elevations of the existing bridge with the proposed structure type siloueted over it also to aid in aesthetics evaluation. Other work included the making animations that gave a drivers eye view while crossing each bridge type. The final Desmond Bridge photosimulations, depicting five structure type alternatives, were used to support the powerpoint presentation made by the proposal team. « BACK

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