Case Study of LUPU Bridge

WORLD’S LONGEST ARCH BRIDGE LUPU BRIDGE (shanghai)

LUPU BRIDGE INTRODUTION :

• The Lupu Bridge of Shanghai is the longest steel arch bridge in the world. Its 550-meter-long arch span is 32 meters longer than that of the New River Gorge Bridge in the US state of West Virginia.
• Lin Yuanpei was the chief designer of the bridge.
• With 2.2 billion yuan (US$266 million) of investment. A six lane bridge Construction began in October 2000 and it was completed in June 2002.
• Main contractor was Shanghai Tongzhu Engineering Pvt Ltd.
• Similar to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Lupu Bridge also functions as a sightseeing attraction.
• The viewing platform of the Lupu Bridge is installed at the top of its giant-bow-like arch lib. Sightseers are to take the high-speed transparent elevator up to the main deck of the bridge, walk up the steps of the pathway along the arch rib—the back of this “giant-bow”- for about 280 meters, reaching the viewing platform about the size of a basketball field.

STRUCTURAL DETAILS:
Lupu Bridge is a half-through suspension arch bridge with the main span of 550 meters.

• The entire whole-steel arch-beam combined structure is composed of steel box arch ribs, orthotropic steel girder, spatial steel hangers, inclined steel columns, steel box bracings between two ribs, and horizontal post-tensioning strands.
• Two inclined arch ribs are 100 meters high from the bottom to the crown and have the cross section of rectangular steel box with the 5-meter width and the depth of 6 meters at the crown and 9 meters at the rib bases.
• The orthotropic steel girder provides six lane carriageways in the center of the deck and two sightseeing pedestrian ways on both sides, which are supported on arch ribs with some hangers and columns.
• There are several horizontal post-tensioning strands in both sides of the girder between the cross beams of both ends of the bridge girder to balance the dead load thrusts from the arch ribs of the central span.

THE LUPU TOP TEN:

1. The longest arch bridge in the world. Its 550-meter-long arch span.
2. The first ever box-arch bridge in the world. The section area of the main arch also sets a record: 9 meters high, 5 meters wide. The main arch is made up of 27 sections.
3. The first major arch bridge to be connected exclusively by welding. The length of on-site welding totals more than 40,000 meters—comparable to the total length of the inner-city elevated freeway of Shanghai.
4. The heaviest lifting weight of single component (860 tons), plus the heaviest lifting weight over the arch rib in a river (480 tons).
5. The most complicated and multiple technologies used in the construction of the main bridge, combining three distinctive methods of bridge-building technology: cable-stay, arch and suspension.
6. The volume of steel used in an arch bridge: more than 35,000 tons. It equals the steel used in building three 70,000-ton vessels.
7. The volume of steel used for the control towers building process: more than 11,000 tons in the construction of a single arch bridge.
8. The 16 horizontal staying cables used in the bridge-building are the longest (760 meters), thickest (18cm in diameter), heaviest (110-ton each) and with the greatest tension-pull tonnage (over 1700 tons) in the world.
9. The greatest thickness of on-site steel plates welding (100mm) in the construction of a steel bridge in the world.
10. The structure is designed to withstand a Force-12 hurricane, and can meet the challenge of an Earthquake that happens once in 3,280 years.