On February 1st, the sun shone brightly and the sky and water were one color. Zheng Julian, an academician of the CAE Member and a professor of the School of Civil and Architectural Engineering of Guangxi University, served as the chief designer, and presided over the construction of the world's largest concrete arch bridge with a span of 600m - Tian'elongtan Bridge, which was completed and opened to traffic.
"I declare that the world's largest span arch bridge, Tian'e Longtan Grand Bridge, has been completed and opened to traffic!" On the same day, an on-site meeting was held at the Tian'e Longtan Grand Bridge, accompanied by the resounding announcement of Wang Naixue, Vice Chairman of the Autonomous Region Political Consultative Conference and Secretary of the Party Committee of Guangxi University. With the joint witness of relevant leaders, experts, employees, representatives of our school's faculty and students, and the public, the Tian'e Longtan Grand Bridge was born.
Wang Naixue pointed out that the completion and opening of the bridge is a great and joyful event for the people of Guangxi. The Tian'e Longtan Grand Bridge has achieved a new leap in the world of arch bridges, which is another achievement of Academician Zheng Junlian's team's courage to take responsibility and innovate for change. It is a new contribution to leading the development of world arch bridges. The contribution of transportation construction lies in the present, and the benefits lie in the future.
Academician Zheng Junlian attended and delivered a speech, expressing gratitude to the leaders at all levels, members of the expert group, and participating units who are concerned about the construction of the bridge. He stated that the Tian'e Longtan Grand Bridge is a collaborative achievement created by various participating units. Its entire industry chain of construction, owner, design, construction, supervision, monitoring, and experimental research is rare in Guangxi and also rare in the country. It is a highly integrated result of industry, academia, research, and application. The main bridge of the bridge is a reinforced skeleton concrete arch bridge with a span of 600 meters, which exceeds the maximum span of a foreign concrete arch bridge by 210 meters, which is 155 meters higher than the world record for concrete arch bridges. This is equivalent to the 100 year increase in the span of concrete arch bridges worldwide, becoming a milestone in the development history of concrete arch bridges in the world, and will inevitably promote China from a world bridge power to a world bridge power.
The Tian'e Longtan Extra Large Bridge is located in the reservoir area of the Longtan Power Station in the Hongshui River Basin of Tian'e County, Hechi City, Guangxi. It is a control project connecting the Nandan to Xialao Expressway. Construction began in June 2020 and took 43 months to complete. The total length is 2488.55 meters. The main bridge is a 600 meter calculated span rigid skeleton concrete arch bridge, with four lanes in both directions and a designed driving speed of 100 kilometers per hour. The completion and opening of the bridge marks the full connection of the Nantian Expressway, and the travel time from Nandan County to Tian'e Xialao Township will be shortened from the original 3 and a half hours to about 1.5 hours. The completed Longtan Grand Bridge seems to stretch out from the mountain peaks, connecting them with each other. It is exquisitely crafted and perfectly natural.
This bridge is another example of the times created by Academician Zheng Junlian leading the research team of Guangxi University, in collaboration with participating units such as Guangxi Transportation Investment Group Co., Ltd., Guangxi Road and Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd., Guangxi Transportation Design Group Co., Ltd., Guangxi Transportation Science Group Co., Ltd., and Guangxi Guitong Engineering Management Group Co., Ltd. It has pioneered the world's 600 meter arch bridge span with innovative Chinese arch bridge technology, achieving breakthroughs in five aspects: first, the 600 meter span is the world's largest arch bridge. The second is full process green construction, informatization, smart construction site management, and zero safety accidents. Thirdly, the construction cost is relatively low, saving 125 million yuan compared to cable-stayed bridges. Fourthly, the entire industry chain of construction owners, design, construction, supervision, monitoring, and experimental research is located in Guangxi, with independent intellectual property rights in Guangxi. The fifth is to achieve a batch of innovative achievements, opening up a new path for the construction of large-span arch bridges: proposing and adopting comprehensive technological innovation measures including strengthening the skeleton, reducing the stress of the completed bridge, regulating construction stress, and multiple structural verification, effectively ensuring the construction safety of the bridge; The overall idea of arch rib verification is proposed, which is mainly based on the double nonlinear analysis and verification of the entire construction process, as well as the allowable stress verification adopted by the current railway concrete bridge specification, and supplemented by the section bearing capacity verification adopted by the highway bridge specification. It has been successfully used in bridge design; Propose a new type of bolted and welded joint connection form, which is connected by external flange bolts and welded together with steel pipes. This not only fully ensures the safety of the joint connection and greatly shortens the construction period, but also effectively avoids the risk of stress redistribution in the arch ribs caused by traditional connection processes cutting the node flange.
The Development and Reform Commission of the Autonomous Region, the Department of Transportation of the Autonomous Region, the Association for Science and Technology of the Autonomous Region, Pinglu Canal Group Co., Ltd., Hechi City, Tiane County, Nandan County, Guangxi Nantian Expressway Co., Ltd., as well as leading experts and employees from participating units, and representatives of teachers and students from Guangxi University attended the on-site opening meeting.
