Bridge Waterway Openings In a majority of cases the height and length of a bridge depend solely upon the amount of clear waterway opening that must be provided to accommodate the floodwaters of the stream
Actually, the problem goes beyond that of merely accommodating the floodwaters and requires prediction of the various magnitudes of floods for given time intervals
It would be impossible to state that some given magnitude is the maximum that will ever occur, and it is therefore impossible to design for the maximum, since it cannot be ascertained
It seems more logical to design for a predicted flood of some selected interval ---a flood magnitude that could reasonably be expected to occur once within a given number of years
For example, a bridge may be designed for a 50-year flood inter