Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge
What is the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge?
Where is the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge located?
How has the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge impacted travel times?
What challenges did engineers face during the construction of the bridge?
What are some notable features of the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge?
Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, longest bridge in the world since its opening in 2011. Located in China, it is part of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway and is 102.4 miles (164.8 km) long. It was built in four years by 10,000 workers, at a cost of $8.5 billion. The bridge is part of a larger effort by the Chinese government to improve national infrastructure and reduce travel times.
Location and geography
The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge connects Shanghai, the largest city in China, and Nanjing, the capital of the Jiangsu province. It is located in the fertile Yangtze River delta, a region that contains the world’s largest urban area. The area, known for its visually striking and economically vital rice paddies, also produces hemp, tea, and cotton. It is one of the wealthiest areas in East Asia; as such, the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge’s location allows it to play an important role in the Chinese economy.
The bridge passes through a number of urban areas, including Danyang, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, and Kunshan. The construction of the bridge has increased the speed at which trains on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway line can travel, helping to reduce travel time between the two cities from 18 hours to less than 5 hours. Likewise, the construction of the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge has more than halved the travel time between the cities of Ningbo, a port city, and Jiaxing, a manufacturing city. This journey, which previously took four and a half hours because of the need to navigate around the lakes and rivers on the route, now lasts only two hours.
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Design and construction
China started improving its transport infrastructure in the early 2000s, in response to the increasing time people were spending in traffic. The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, conceptualized to reduce travel time, was designed and built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, a subsidiary of the government-funded China Communications Construction Company.
A bridge was chosen over a conventional on-ground railway line to reduce construction costs as well as land area required; building a bridge would require only 27 acres of land as opposed to 70 acres if an on-ground line were to be constructed. The terrain of the area, especially the soft soil of the Yangtze River, provided significant difficulties for the engineers of the bridge. To accommodate the terrain and prevent the bridge from collapsing, the bridge was built as a viaduct, a segmented bridge made of smaller sections held up by arches and pillars. The bridge is also cable-stayed, meaning it is supported by flexible diagonal cables, a technique frequently used for longer bridges. As a result of these engineering decisions, the bridge is purportedly capable of withstanding magnitude 8 earthquakes, as well as typhoons and direct impacts from naval vessels of up to 300,000 tons.
The bridge is divided into two main sections: the Danyang section, which is 32.5 miles (52.4 km) long, and the Kunshan section, which is 69.9 miles (112.4 km) long. A section of the bridge crosses open water over the Yangcheng Lake; this portion, 5.6 miles (9 km) long, required 2,000 pillars to support the bridge over water. Although the bridge has an average height of about 100 feet (30 meters), it has a maximum clearance of 492 feet (150 meters) in some sections to allow naval vessels to pass beneath it. Construction began on April 18, 2006, and was completed on November 15, 2010. The bridge was opened on June 30, 2011. Construction of the bridge cost $8.5 billion and employed about 10,000 people.
Because the bridge runs alongside the Yangtze River, its shape follows the natural curve of the river. As such, the bridge is noted for its many curves. Due to its size and status as a record-breaking construction achievement, the bridge has become a tourist attraction in and of itself, furthering its economic contribution to the area.
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