The Beipan River Bridge is located on the route of Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway and was completed recently, thus marking the end of China’s largest and last dominant project of the east-west high-speed railway network.
It is a suspension structure with the length of bridge measuring in at 721.25 meters and features a 445 meters main span above the Beipan River located in southwest China’s Guizhou Province. The span is the longest in the world and has been made using reinforced concrete – this posed quite a bit of problems during the construction. As per the design, the construction had to tackle 170,000 cubic meters of concrete along with 40,000 tons of rebar.
Yan Chuanchuan, chief engineer of the project under the China Railway Port and Channel Engineering Group Co., Ltd. said, “The main span of [the cable-crane] is 827 meters, which is the largest in China. Its lifting capacity is 130 tons. Vehicles transport materials to the hoisting platform and then they are carried to the surface of the bridge through the reserved hoisting holes beneath the bridge by the cable-crane. This is the first time such reserved holes and a cable-crane are used to distribute materials at home.”
The bridge has been reinforced with 750mm caliber steel tubes that have been filled with C80 concrete and then wrapped with C60 concrete in order to ensure that the bridge is capable of bearing rail speeds upto 350 km. The C80 concrete is the most intensified concrete in railway construction as of right now.
The bridge is slated for completion before the Spring Festival that is due on 8th February, 2016.
