Daduhe Bridge Luding

2210 02/11/2016 151

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Daduhe Bridge Luding

Daduhe Bridge Luding  under construction Aerial view Yakang expressway construction 航拍雅康高速建设 Daduhe Bridge Luding 泸定大渡河特大桥 Luding, Sichuan, China (919) feet high / (280) meters high 3,609 foot span / 1,100 meter span 2018 Crossing a wide reservoir from a downstream dam just north of Luding city, the giant Daduhe suspension bridge is the largest structure on the Ya'an to Kangding expressway. Like many of China's Westernmost highways, this extension from the G5 expressway came many years after the more populous cities had already been connected in northern and eastern Sichuan Province. The Kanding route was especially difficult to construct with an amazing 82% of the road on bridges or in tunnels. Located at kilometer 99, the alignment chosen for the Daduhe Bridge resulted in an unusual design for the east end where the anchorages had to be placed high up inside the steep mountain slope. To avoid compromising the strength of the deep underground anchorage, the engineers split the east-west lanes apart into tunnels separated by more then 100 meters, keeping the alignment off to the sides of the cable anchorage. The deck of the Daduhe Bridge is approximately 235 meters above the full lake level or 280 meters to the original level of the Dadu River. The construction of the truss will follow an unusual pattern first implemented on the Aizhai Bridge in Hunan Province where each truss piece will be pulled and rolled along with wheel bogies that travel along horizontal wires hanging from the suspender cables. The wheel bogies travel back to the cliff side staging area to carry another truss section out and the process repeats until the truss is completed. Luding was already one of the most famous cities in Western China for its legendary chain bridge of 100 meters that ranked among the longest suspension bridges in the world since its completion in 1701. Several historic battles have taken place at or near the chain bridge due to its strategic importance, most notably during the Long March in 1935. The Daduhe Bridge at Luding is one of at least a dozen major suspension bridges that have opened in China since 2009 that have span lengths of approximately a kilometer or longer and deck heights of 200 to 500 meters.