The 8.8-kilometer Gaoyou Lake Grand Bridge on China's Ningyan Expressway Has Been Fully Connected

en.Wedoany.com Reported - At around 11:00 on September 11, the Gaoyou Lake Grand Bridge on China's Ningyan Expressway was fully connected. With a total length of about 8.8 kilometers, the bridge is the longest bridge along the entire Ningyan Expressway and one of the project's major controlling works. This connection completed the continuous linking of the bridge's main structure, and the project will subsequently move into construction stages such as bridge deck and pavement works.

The Gaoyou Lake Grand Bridge is being constructed by China Railway Seventh Group. The route successively crosses the Huai River waterway into the Yangtze River, the Gaoyou Lake wetland protection area, Zhuangtai River, Shenhong River, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and County Road X237, among other areas. The construction environment involves water areas, graded navigable channels, wetlands, and existing roads. The bridge superstructure includes various structural forms such as prefabricated box girders, steel-concrete composite girders, and cast-in-place cantilever continuous girders.

Among them, the bridge section crossing the Huai River waterway into the Yangtze River adopts a 55+3×100+55-meter five-span continuous girder structure. The left and right spans of this continuous girder were fully closed on May 29, opening up the subsequent girder transport and erection channels. During construction, multi-stage cantilever casting and closure had to be completed, with full-process control of girder elevation, alignment, and temperature stress.

The continuous girder crossing the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was closed on June 26. It adopts an 87.5+145+87.5-meter variable cross-section single-box single-cell structure, crossing the approximately 240-meter-wide Class II navigable channel of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, with a main span of 145 meters and a total bridge deck width of 34.5 meters. Block No. 0 of the continuous girder is 10 meters long and 9.1 meters high. The cantilever casting segments are constructed using the traveling formwork method. The mid-span closure segment is 2 meters long, with a concrete volume of 36.5 cubic meters and a self-weight of 94.9 tons.

In 2024, the Gaoyou Lake Grand Bridge entered the construction stage for the main piers crossing the Huai River waterway into the Yangtze River and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The continuous girder crossing the Huai River waterway into the Yangtze River completed double-span closure at the end of May, and the continuous girder crossing the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal completed closure at the end of June. After that, construction continued on the remaining box girder erection, bridge deck system, and ancillary structures, achieving full bridge connection on September 11.

The Ningyan Expressway starts from the Nanjing Ring Expressway, passes through Nanjing Luhe, Yangzhou Yizheng and Gaoyou, and Taizhou Xinghua, and ends at the Yanjing Expressway. The Yangzhou section has a total length of 89.524 kilometers, with about 58.53 kilometers of the route within Gaoyou City. The Gaoyou Lake Grand Bridge is located in the Yangzhou Gaoyou section and is an important bridge project crossing the Gaoyou Lake water system and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.

After the Ningyan Expressway is completed, it will form a more direct east-west expressway corridor from Nanjing to Yancheng. According to the previously announced project traffic plan, the travel time on the Nanjing-Yancheng Expressway is expected to be shortened from about 3 hours to less than 2 hours.