As the eight steel trussed arch girders were put into place, the main body of a bridge for the Beijing-Zhangjiakou railway crossing the Guanting reservoir in Hebei Province was completed on Nov. 11, marking a major breakthrough in the construction of the railway.
Wu Keqiang, project manager from the China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., said the construction of the 9,077-meter long bridge with eight 110-meter-long steel trussed arch girders was a technical challenge due to the site being one of the important water sources of Beijing -- environmental protection was a high priority.
"In order to lower the impact on the water quality, we decided to use the incremental launching method," Wu said."We assembled the steel trussed arch girders on shore and then pushed them toward the reservoir center, so that we could minimize the construction process above the water."
Gao Guangpin, the chief engineer of the project, said the incremental launching method was a big challenge. The eight arch girders weigh 14,900 tons. More than 30,000 high-strength bolts were used in the assembly of a girder, which requires high precision.
It cost the construction team eight month to assemble the girders and push them in place.
The bridge on Guanting reservoir is one of the key projects in the construction of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou railway. The railway has a total length of 174 kilometers, with high-speed trains to run at a speed of 350 kilometers per hour. The project is scheduled for completion by the end of 2019 and will shorten the trip between the two cities from the current three and a half hours to just one hour.