It is my hope that this treatise will serve as a textbook for students and as information for civil engineers involved in bridge construction. My intent was to give a short guideline on bearings and expansion joints for bridge designers and not to mention all the requirements for the manufacturers of such products. These requirements are usually covered by product guidelines, which vary between different countries. Not all the references are related to the content of this document. They are more or less a collection of relevant papers sometimes dealing with special problems.
