In September of this autumn, the siren of Lusi Port in Jiangsu Province sounded, and the world's largest pile driving ship, Tiejian Bridge Pile 1, slowly sailed offshore towards Wan Sheng Bay in Brazil. A ship crossing the ocean, carrying Chinese marine equipment to a new height, marks the progress of China's high-end marine equipment service for global marine engineering construction towards deeper and farther waters.

The giant ship sailed thousands of miles through deep blue

This world's largest pile driver has a length of 130.5 meters, a pile frame height of 156 meters, a lifting capacity of 700 tons, an operating water depth of 70 meters, and can drive super large pile foundations with a diameter of 7 meters. Shipped from the Lusi Port Foreign Trade Terminal in Jiangsu, it is planned to enter the South Atlantic through the mouth of the Yangtze River, the Strait of Malacca, and Cape of Good Hope, and arrive at the waters off Recife. The voyage is 11300 nautical miles and is expected to take 45 days. Before shipment, both the ship and the shore shall complete the preparation of special plans, route survey, and risk assessment, and monitor the entire process dynamically. The Salvadoran Cross Sea Bridge spans the largest bay in Brazil, the Wan Sheng Bay, and is the world's deepest pile foundation cross sea bridge. The construction of the main bridge pile foundation is carried out in a water depth of 64 meters, which is complex in marine geology and solves the bottleneck of traditional equipment being unable to reach, hit and stabilize in deep and complex sea conditions. Keywords: pile driver, Salvadoran cross sea bridge

Two pioneering breakthroughs to overcome bottlenecks

Technically, this ship has achieved two global firsts. For the first time, DP dynamic positioning combined with anchor positioning fusion technology was applied. Anchor positioning anchored the four corners of the ship into a fixed position on the seabed, and dynamic positioning sensed wind, waves, and currents in real time. The ship's body was finely adjusted by the reverse thrust of the rudder and propeller. Combined with domestically produced Beidou high-precision satellite positioning, the pile driving accuracy reached centimeter level. The first application of a closed hydraulic system with a main oil cylinder, completely independently designed and manufactured domestically, converts the potential energy of the pile frame descending and tilting forward into electrical energy recovery, with an energy recovery rate of 40%. The bridge is jointly invested, constructed, and operated by CCECC, a subsidiary of China Railway Construction Corporation, and China Railway Construction Bridge Bureau, among other shareholders, through a franchise company. It has a main span of 682 meters and a total length of 46.8 kilometers. After completion, the travel time between Salvador City and Veracruz City was reduced from 1 hour by ferry to about 15 minutes, and the transportation distance for grain, cotton, and fruits in western Bahia State was shortened by 200 kilometers.Editor/Min Jing