China is the ideal place for the most adventurous engineers. To the country’s taste for huge constructions (such as turbines), an extremely complex orography is added that leads engineers to devise extreme solutions to connect the territories. Thus infarction tunnels, impossible roads, the longest maritime bridge or gigantic dams arise. One of its regions, Guizhou, is one that needs a very specific infrastructure to not be isolated, and that is where the new highest bridge in the world is.
And the fire test before its inauguration has consisted of filling it with trucks.
The bridge. A few years ago we talked about the Lege bridge over the Beipan River as the highest in the world. It was at that time when 565 meters above the waters. But another bridge was needed on the same river, and the decision was made to build it in the Huajiang cannon. The challenge was capital, due to the characteristics that the new bridge should have:
- Two towers of 265 and 205 meters at the ends.
- Cables of 9,000 tons each.
- A total length of 2,890 meters.
- The vain has a length of 1,420 meters.
- And what interests us: the road is 625 meters from the ground, reaching the end of the towers at 776 meters.
Record time. To visualize the height, two Eiffel tower would enter, one on the other, under the hanging section, but also involves the longest hanging segment of the world built in a mountainous area. The works began in 2021 and in January of this year it was reported that 75% of the project had been completed.
The rhythm in recent months has been agile and we are at a point where the main works have been completed. In total, it is estimated that 439,000 m³ of concrete and 49,000 tons of steel have been used these four years.
Fire test. And the most curious thing is how those responsible for the work have decided to test the infrastructure before the opening scheduled by the end of September. They have used 96 trucks, as if it were a parade, which have been placed online throughout the hanging section for five days.
In total, 3,000 tons that add to the rest of the tests that have been carried out in the structure, since many of these constructions in China are executed in areas prone to earthquakes, and the area where the bridge of the Gran Canyon of Huajiang is located is no stranger to earth trembling. In Guizhou, 329 earthquakes have been recorded of at least four magnitude during the last ten years, and that is why the bridge is equipped with sensors that monitor vibrations and structural variables in real time.
It is not a whim. In the end, the loading test of that hundred trucks is a more news around the new largest bridge in the world, which is an achievement not only for its height, but for the extreme topographic challenge they have faced. It is estimated that it has cost about 280 million dollars and, once open, will cross the cannon in just a couple of minutes when it took more than an hour before.
Everything to connect rural areas, this being one of the government’s objectives to improve communications between all regions of the country and that is not only being carried out on land: also in rivers. The end? Improve all communications to consolidate the ‘new silk route’.
Image | CCTV
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