“Between the two towers, which act as buttresses, we’ll use 5,500 crates to build a bridge that is 6.5 meters tall. We’ll raise the bridge by jacking it up, which we’ll do using a construction that exerts force on the towers.” Versteege witnessed the failure of the bridge in Enschede and saw what went wrong. “Like us, they wanted to bring the towers closer together in order to use the tension this creates to stabilize the bridge. But they used a lashing strap, positioned a little too high up. As a result, the towers twisted slightly and the tension they needed was lost.”

Shift

Learning from this, the team in Eindhoven is keen to avoid using a lashing strap and wants to exert force on only one tower – while it is still under construction. “We can shift a half-built tower using a hydraulic cylinder,” says Vrenken. “Think of a paving slab, we’re talking that kind of distance. Then we’ll finish building the tower using full crates and that will make it so heavy that once we’ve removed the jack there’s no chance it will shift back.” Vrenken’s team has already performed this feat on a smaller scale and a 10 m arch of beer crates had to be compressed 10 centimeters.

Another piece of ingenuity feeding the Eindhoven team’s confidence that their record attempt will succeed is the bridge’s new shape. The bridge is narrower in the middle than at its base. This makes it lighter and less vulnerable to the wind.

Scaffolding

It’s going to be a job in itself to de-scaffold the bridge, sighs Versteege. “The Romans also built arches and they were able to make their wooden scaffolds collapse by tapping on a certain plank, and doing this made the arch strong and stable. What we have is a 40m long arch resting on steel scaffolding. We will draw it down in a number of places at the same time so that the bridge drops in a controlled way. We’ll have to keep a close eye on how fast it needs to drop at each spot. That will depend on the curvature.”

Listening

The 2016 committee has impressed on Versteege not to rely wholly on computer models. “We need to use gut instinct too. That’s why we are now teaching ourselves to recognize the sounds you hear when the crates are under various degrees of tension. We give them a tap with a rod. It’s knowledge we’ll need when we are building.”

If the bridge can stand unaided for an hour on May 11^th, the record will be prolonged. TU Delft won’t stage an attempt to break the record, Versteege knows. “I heard that Delft is keen to break the association between students and beer crates, and wants to stop supporting the project. But I want to emphasize that this is a project about building a complex structure. Whether the crates are blue or green or Fristie drink pink is neither here nor there.”

For the first time in the record’s history, the crates collected for stacking will be green, Heineken’s color. And they’re printed with big zeros to indicate 0.0 % alcohol content. That’s happenstance, explains Vrenken. “We approached several breweries and Heineken was the most enthusiastic and loaned us these crates. What’s more, we carried out some tests and found that Heineken 0.0 crates are the strongest ones.

Demolition plans

For the first time, a Beer-crate Bridge committee has written demolition plans. Plan A has a telescopic handler lifting up the bridge until it neatly falls apart; in plan B the students will break down the buttresses with their bare hands until the bridge collapses. Plan A will be quicker, and speed is required; study association Lucid needs the Fluxveld the week after for a festival. “All the sand, the concrete slabs, the fences, the scaffold poles, the water reservoir built from beer crates in which the bottles are filled and the party site, everything has been demolished afterwards.” The 22-strong beer crate committee is hoping to get plenty of volunteers. You can follow how the project is progressing on Insta (@bkb_koers) and on their website.