Enlargement of steel structures of the Crimean Bridge road arch has been completed on the Kerch shore: its span was connected at the height of 45 m from the structure base. At the same time the bridge rail arch has been prepared for installation on arch foundations, the Crimean Bridge press office said.
"The road bridge arch is comprised of nearly 200 major elements: blocks of orthotropic plates, curved arches, etc. To gather them together, we have performed approximately 4.5 km of butt weld joints of 1st category, screwed 175000 HSFG bolts (nearly 110 tonnes),” said Mikhail Piksaev, the head of a separate division, Deputy Chief Operations Director of "MostoOtrjad-1".
“In the near future we plan to complete the remaining work: installation of flexible hangers, to mount operational systems, to coat the steel structures with anticorrosive paint. The total weight of a span will be almost 5,000 tonnes.
Flexible hangers connect the structure bottom part with a curved arch. These are solid 6-cm-thick ropes made of high tensile steel wire. The rope is composed of a core made of round wire and multiple external layers of Z-shaped wires. It has a minimum tensile force of 3660 kN (or more than 370 tonnes).
The flexible hangers are connected along the span axis with intervals of 9.6 meters of a total of 44 (22 on each side of the arch). The length of hangers ranges between 5 m and 44 m, the weight of each – 100 kg to over 800 kg. In total to fabricate the road arch builders used more than 1.2 km high-strength steel rope weighing nearly 25 tonnes.
The flexible hangers will tightened to a designed value after the arched span will installed over the fairway of Kerch Strait.
The estimated wind speed at the level of the road arch span can reach 40 m/s. Therefore, to prevent negative impact designers had conducted studies to choose the best form of special structures on the façade of the arch span. They will minimize wind effect and ensure comfortable operation.
The arch span of the railway bridge is ready for final installation. In mid-June the contractor completed the enlargement of arch structures, then the builders installed operating systems: inspection passages, elements of the monitoring system of engineering structures, lightning protection and grounding, aeronautical and maritime signalling. Metal structures have been coated with three layers anti-corrosion protection – about 55,000 liters of special paint. Total weight of the construction now exceeds 6,000 tonnes.
Arch spans are the largest elements of the Crimean Bridge. The length of each span nears 227 meters, height at the highest point of the arch is 45 meters (or 80 m above the water surface). After installation of the arches on the fairway foundations the bridge passage height will be 35 meters and width of 185 meters to enable passage of cargo ships.
After the final completion of all works the arch spans will be transferred and mounted one by one on fairway supports. First it will be the railway arches, then the road arches.