Forth Road Bridge Scotland

The Forth Road Bridge is one of the UKs most iconic bridges. Opened in 1964, it spans the Firth of Forth and connects Edinburgh to Fife, running alongside the historic Forth Railway Bridge. At the time of building, The Forth Road Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in Europe.

In 1998, it was decided that the 768 hangers needed to be replaced due to internal fretting within the ropes and corrosion. The hangers range in length from 2.5 metres to 90 metres.

Consulting engineers WA Fairhurst and Partners were appointed and, after testing, it was decided that the original wire rope constructions of 6 x 19 (44m) and 6 x 27 (12mm) should be replaced with fully locked coil ropes of 65mm, 75mm and 98mm diameter. To avoid internal fretting, it was agreed that the hangers would not be rope looped over the main cable and held with a miniature socket, but instead replaced with individual ropes with individual sockets. This would allow the use of long life coatings on the socket and it was decided that WIRELOCK® would be used instead of zinc as the socketing medium. This replacement work was completed in 2000.