On June 5, 2020, as the last steel box girder was lifted into place, the main bridge of the Hubei Qipanzhou Yangtze River Highway Bridge constructed by the China Railway Construction Bridge Bureau Group officially closed. This is the first Helong Yangtze River Bridge in Hubei Province since the resumption of the epidemic.

The Qipanzhou Yangtze River Highway Bridge is a steel box girder suspension bridge. It is an important channel for crossing the Qichun-Jiayu Expressway. The bridge starts from Qichun County in the south of Huanggang City to Yangxin County in the Huangshi City. It spans 1038 meters and jumps over the Yangtze River. The technical content of the bridge The construction is high and the construction is difficult. The main tower, anchorage, main cable erection, and steel box girder erection are major difficulties in construction.

The north main tower of the bridge has a total height of 159 meters. It is constructed with an ACS100 integral hydraulic self-climbing form system. The system is driven by 10 heavy-duty oil cylinders. Compared with the conventional separate climbing formwork system, the integral hydraulic self-climbing form system is fully enclosed. There is no need to unlock, and the overall climbing at the same time during jacking is high in safety and work efficiency.

The anchor body of the bridge's north anchorage is an enlarged base gravity anchor. The anchorage has a total length of 61.5 meters, a width of 60 meters, and a height of 42 meters. The concrete volume of the anchor body is large. The temperature control technology of large-volume concrete is used in construction through optimization of mix ratio, modeling, Calculation, pre-embedment of cooling water pipes and temperature-sensing components, etc., to grasp the internal temperature, timely adjust the temperature to ensure the quality.

In order to reduce the impact on the main channel of the Yangtze River, the bridge uses a drone to pull the pilot cable across the river. The pilot cable uses a high-strength and high-toughness DuPont wire with a diameter of 2.0 mm and a length of 1760 meters. It takes 5 minutes to pass through the main tower of the north and south of the bridge. Based on this cable, the "small rope pulls big rope" method is used to drag and drop, gradually increasing the size of the wire rope to complete the pilot cable erection. The two main cables of the bridge are 1811 meters long and 671 mm in diameter. Each main cable consists of 101 strands Synthetic, the pulling force of a single main cable is about 18540 tons.

The Qipanzhou Yangtze River Highway Bridge is an important part of the “Nine Vertical Five Horizontal Three Rings” expressway network planned by Hubei Province. The bridge will effectively divert the vehicles crossing the Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway and the Fuyin Expressway to ease the traffic pressure on the East Hubei Yangtze River Bridge. It plays an important role in accelerating the economic development of Southeast Hubei. In the future, after the completion of the Qitai Expressway, a fast channel for Hubei to communicate with Anhui will be formed, connecting Xianning, Huangshi, Huanggang, Anqing and other cities along the river, which will promote the rise of the central region and the construction of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and promote the development of East Hubei and Anhui. The economic development and red tourism development in West and North Jiangxi are of great significance.

China Railway Construction has made tremendous contributions to Helong, the first Yangtze River bridge since Hubei resumed its work. Would you like to praise the builders? Editor/Peng Xue