FACULTY OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY & PLANT MANAGEMENT GROUP ASSIGNMENT

SUTONG BRIDGE

Prepared for: PM IR DR KARTINI BT KAMARUDDIN

Prepared by : FELICIA MATHEW AMALINA FARAH BAHAMAN ROSWANIDA BUN SUSHILAWATI ISMAIL SITI NOR SUHAIDA CHE RODI

INTRODUCTION

Bridge is a structure spanning and providing passage over a gap or barrier, such as a river, mountain, lake or roadway. The basic type of bridges can be categorized to beam bridge which consists of a horizontal beam supported at each end by piers, truss bridge which is consist of an assembly of a series of steel bar triangles, arch bridge which mostly made of steel and concrete as well as the suspension bridge which design to resist bending and twisting. There are many spectacular bridges built all over the world, for example, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, also known as the Pearl Bridge, is the longest suspension bridge at 1,991 meters (6,532 feet) in the world, Sydney Harbour Bridge is the worlds largest steel arch bridge with the top of the bridge standing 134 meters (440 feet) above Sydney Harbour and Sutong Bridge the longest main span of cable stayed bridge in the world. Every bridges constructed with the magnificent technology not only become the landmark of their own country, at the same time it contribute to the advancement of bridge construction engineering all over the world. This paper will be focus on the construction method adopted, technology used and challenges faced during construction of Sutong Bridge which is located in the southest of Jiangsu Province, China. 1.1 PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Sutong Bridge is the first cable-stayed bridge with a main span over 1000m in the Yangtze River estuary of China. This bridge is located in the alluvial plain of Yangtze River Delta in China. It is a key project to connect city of Shenyang to Haikou (north to South city of China). The bridge becomes important highways for transportation between north and south cities of China, and promotes coastal economic development along the Yangtze river in Jiangsu. Design with a span of 1088m, the construction work of this dual three-lane highway bridge was start commenced in June 2003 and completed in June 2007 (ASCE News Volume 35, 2010). 1.1.1 Challenges of Site Conditions

The construction of the bridge faced great challenges due to many conditions. In meteorological conditions, the site location has north subtropical and humid monsoon climate where highest and lowest temperature can reach 42c and -13c. Strong breeze occurred throughout the year with 120 rainy days on average. The site also facing threats from extreme weather conditions such as typhoon, tornadoes and rainstorms. Flood occurs in flood season from May to October. High and low tides occurs twice a day, and is mainly due to storm tide where height could reach 7 meter and above during typhoon. For foundation conditions, the bedrock is buried deep, approximately 240m below the bottom of river. The cover layer thickness mainly consists of clay, silty clay and silty sand. The river facing heavy traffic from many kind of ships passing the river, on average 6000 ship vessels per day (You, Dong, & Wu, 2008). 2 CONSTRUCTION OF SUTONG BRIDGE

Sutong bridge construction was commenced in June 2003 and completed the foundation in May 2005. Main structure of Sutong Bridge consists of the foundation, tower, deck and installation of cables. Sutong Bridge has two main pylons supporting for main span of structure, which constructed at Yangtze river where total span of the bridge is 32.4 km. The construction of the two main pylons required large pile caps and long piles.

2.1 2.1.1

FOUNDATION Introduction to Construction of Foundation

Sutong bridge foundation has set world record for achieving largest foundation ever constructed, having pile cap of size 114 m x 48 m and 117 m long piles. The construction of foundation also achieved several achievements such as construction of extra-large and deep group pile foundation, installation of huge steel cofferdam, and permanent large scour protection around the foundation (You et al., 2008). 2.1.2 Method of Construction

Due to condition of the river and site area, method of constructing foundation is revised and redesigned to counter all possible problems that may encounter during installation. The method implemented is to construct construction platform from the top of pier site, installation of drill shaft from construction platform, grouting to create bore piles from drill shaft, scour protection construction, and construct pile caps to support pylons (You et al., 2008) 2.1.3 Design of Foundations

Sutong Bridge foundation is constructed using high-rise pile cap. Every pier that supports the bridge consists of 18 of 1.8 meter in diameter cast-in-situ bored piles. Bore pile used was C35 underwater concrete with pile caps of grade C40 concrete. For main pier, there are 42 cast-in-situ bored piles with a varying diameter between 2.5m to 2.8m. Bored piles are installed deep into the bottom of river at about 310 meter deep at south side and 270 meter deep at north side (Xie, 2010). The quaternary deposit distributed stable in this region with a thick thickness. The bedrock under the south side back-span is about 310m deep and about 270m deep under the north side. Every transitional pier (foundation of auxiliary pier far from pylon) consists of 19 numbers of 2.5 to 2.8m diameter cast-in-situ bored piles, with pile caps dimension of 43.2 !19.3 meters, and 108 to 110 depth piles (Xie, 2010).

Figure 2-1 Construction of foundation of No.4 main pier

The construction of foundation for pylons requires 131 bored piles with diameter from 2.5 to 2.8 meters. Main pier no. 4 as shown in Figure 2-1 has pile length of 117 m and main pier no. 5 is 114m. The pile cap is dumbbell-shaped, and every pylon column has plane dimensions of cap of 51.35 x 48.1 m with thickness 5 meters to 13.32 meters. Between 2 caps, there is a tie beam to connect both pile caps. Tie beam has dimensions of 11.05 meters to 28.1 meters with thickness of 6 meters. Concrete used for pile cap is C60 concrete (Bittner, Gerwick, Zhang, Jensen, & Hansen, 2004). 2.1.4 Construction Platforms

The method is to use steel casings as supporting piles to construct construction platform on top. The top elevation of the drill platform was 7 m, approximately 3 m above high water. The main platform was used as both a template to drive the 131 drill shaft casings and to provide a work deck for the drill units. After installation of each drilled shaft casing, bracing was added to tie each casing into the work deck, and thereby add rigidity to the entire work deck (You et al., 2008). 2.1.5 Drill Shafts

Drill shaft was constructed from construction platform on top due to high river current. After installation of drill shaft, drilling was performed with 8 rotary-drill units position of the top of the construction platform. The reinforcing cages were fabricated in four sections and coupled together with threaded mechanical connectors on the work deck over the top of the casings prior to lowering them into the drill hole. Concrete was placed with a tremie pipe centered in the drill hole. Both drilling and concreting operation were conducted simultaneously on the platforms (Bittner et al., 2004). 2.1.6 Scour Protections

The scour protection was designed in such a way that it would allow for the construction of the piles through the central part of a temporary scour protection and then later on the final scour protection. It is to protect the foundation from high river current and floods (Bittner et al., 2004). 2.1.7 Innovation of constructing foundation

Many difficulties and challenges were overcome during the foundation design and construction with lots of innovative way. Huixing, Xiaoyong, Maosheng, Qinlong, & Xiali, (2009) summarized the achievement with the following: a. The foundation scheme with combination of group piles and thick pile cap is a good solution for foundations of extra-large bridges to reduce the risk and more economic. In order to ensure the bearing capacity of the foundation, steel casing, steel cofferdam and permanent scour protection measures can be considered for implementation. b. Besides solving the construction platform in deep water stability problem, utilizing of pile steel casing also improve accuracy and save cost. c. Centralized PHP slurry system can help to maintain stability of deep bored hole as well as improve construction sufficiency and favorable for environmental protection. d. Successful integral and synchronized lowering of large steel cofferdam shows that multiple jacking synchronized control technology can be used to lower large steel structure in water.

2.2

TOWER

The towers of Sutong Bridge has a reverse Y shape (Figure 2-2) with a height of 300.4m high and is a reinforced concrete structure with hollow cross-section. This Y-shaped was chosen among other alternatives shape like diamond and A-shaped since it was manifested harmony of heaven and human beings in Chinese traditional culture (You, He, Dong, Zhang, & Wu, 2009). The tower was consisting about 27786m3 volume of concrete and 7981 tons weight of reinforcing steel. The upper tower is constructed by concrete and steel anchor box and the maximum weight of a single segment steel anchor box is 45.8tons (Xie, 2010).

Figure 2-2 Reverse Y shape tower 2.2.1 Technology Used in Constructing the Tower

The towers were built with an automatic hydraulic climbing form system, in 68 sections with each standard section is approximately 4.5 m high. Steel anchor boxes were fabricated in the workshop, pre-assembled, and erected by tower crane on site. The construction of the tower was used two type of tower cranes which are big crane, Potain MD3600 and a normal crane, Jianglu QTZ315 that shown in Figure 2-3. This two type of tower crane was used in order to overcome the factors of high wind resistance and large lifting capacity (Xie, 2010).

Figure 2-3 Type of Tower Crane Used Besides that, this construction was used wind tunnel tests of the free standing pylon in order to determine the pylons critical galloping wind speed, structural strength, and stability. This test aimed to evaluate wind-resistance safety during construction and wind effects on construction equipment, working conditions of workers, and to determine the corresponding damping measures according to test results (Xie, 2010). The results of this test showed that pylons of the bridge could satisfy the wind resistance requirements and normal working requirements under the allowable construction wind speeds. Tower aero elastic tests also were carried out to establish the dynamic response characteristics due to the various aerodynamic excitation mechanisms (Morgenthal, 2010). 2.2.2 Challenges in Constructing Tower

One of the most challenges involve in constructing the tower is to control the space of geometrical position, alignment and precision of the tower since the height of the bridge is big and the lower and middle tower component is tilt (Chengbin, et.al., 2009). Besides that, the accumulation of the root tower moment and the additional stress caused by the self-loading of the tower column and the horizontal component of the construction load also will effect the liner control of the cable tower.

Figure 2-4 The Principal Graph of The Tracing Prism Method

Another challenges that involved while constructing the tower is concrete segmental control. Since the construction of the Sutong Bridge is using the tracing prism method in measurement work, then the skill person and right method used need to put into consideration to ensure the construction section segment determined is accurate (Chengbin, et.al., 2009). Tracking prisms were used for construction control of pylon verticality during pylon construction so as to compensate such ambient factors as wind and temperature influence on survey measurements. Figure 2-4 shown the principal graph of the tracing prism method that can be used while measuring the concrete segmental control. 2.3 DECK

Deck is one of the important parts in the bridge production. As for the Sutong Bridge, the dimension of the girder is as indicated in the Error! Reference source not found.. Total width of the girder is 41.0m, the height at the symmetry line is 4.0m. In standard girder sections, space between neighboring crossbeams is 4.0m, with the thickness of deck plate, cross beam, longitudinal beam all being 14mm. The thickness of the U rib wall, welded to the deck, is 8mm; its mouth width is 300mm, bottom width 180mm, height 300m and the space between 600mm (Al-Ammaren, 2009).

Figure 2-5 The dimension of Sutong Bridge girder During in service, repeated traffic loads influence the deck pavement. As referring to the project feasibility report of Sutong Bridge, it is expected that the traffic will reach 46,850 vehicles per day in the first year the bridge is operational and the traffic average increase rate per year will be 3.9% until 2015 and 2.7% from 2015 to 2025 (Yang & Zheng, 2009). As being calculated and reported by the traffic makeup and vehicle types, the standard axial loading on the pavement will bring cumulative total up to 15.43 million applications in its design of 12 years service span. So that, the design of the deck does play important roles in fulfilling the criteria as to response with the traffic load which will increase year by year. 2.3.1 Deck pavement production and the technology used

An orthotropic deck had been chosen in making the bridge. It is known that orthotropic decks do offer a flexible and low thermal capacity dependence base for the pavement. This floor consisted of a steel deck plate and being supported by longitudinal stringers. The steel orthotropic deck for the bridge was fabricated offsite and then delivered by barge to the bridge site in 16m long segments weighing up to 450 tonnes each (Dorman Long Technology, 2013). The delivery barges were moored in the river below the bridge

and the deck segments were then lifted to final height and aligned with the previously erected deck segment. Figure 2-6 below shows the orthotropic deck pavement installation. While for the pavement structure, epoxy asphalt concrete (EAC) has been used as the materials. EAC is an excellent surfacing material for deck pavement with solidity, heat stability and fatigue resistance. EAC is one of material that commonly being used in deck pavement production all over the world. Since EAC has been used successfully for deck pavement in China with the high performance, thus it has been chosen for the deck pavement for Sutong Bridge production. The overlay is made up of two layers where the top surfacing layer is 30mm thickness of EAC, the under layer is 25mm thickness of EAC and epoxy asphalt being used for the bond between those two layers. The deck plate is coated with a mixture of epoxy colophony and zinc lacquer. The binder layer between deck and overlay is EA and this layer also has an isolation function (Yang & Zheng, 2009).

Figure 2-6 Orthotropic deck installation 2.3.2 Challenges during deck construction

Previous researches showed that the poor performances of the deck pavement are because of the notable draught stress in the surfacing layer and high shear stress in the binder layer (Yang & Zheng, 2009). Traffic loads, wind loads can also be considered as the challenge that need to be focused on thus no further issues may occur later on. A reasonable structure and material design is the crucial factor to be looked into for this project to success. An orthotropic steel deck of Sutong Bridge is relatively lightweight

which makes it attractive where pre-fabrication or rapid erection is required. Orthotropic steel decks also lessen the mass and reduce wind loads. While the deck pavement in service is influenced by repeated traffic loads, therefore fatigue resistance of surfacing material is the key issue for deck pavement design, so empirical-analytical approach is recommended to be done further. 2.4 CABLE

Sutong Bridge is the first cable-stayed bridge with the longest cable about 577 meters and weighs 59 tonnes. The stay cables are arranged in double inclined cable planes with a standard spacing of 16 meters in the central span and 12 meters near the ends of the back spans along the girder. The span arrangement of the bridge is shown in Figure 2-7.

Figure 2-7 Span Arrangement of Cable Stayed (unit : m) Parallel wire stay cables were selected for Sutong Bridge. Cable- stayed bridges have been selected to construct because box girder bridges with span lengths of 231.6 m have been built. This type of cable should be select if span length of modern bridge from 153 to 1088 m (A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, 2004). It was designed by using parallel wire strand consisting of 7 mm wires with a cross sectional area of 38.48 mm" in order to reduce the wind load effect (Jiawu et al., 2003). Made by galvanized high strength wires as shown in Figure 2-8, these stay cables has service life of 50 years and dead weight of 59 tons (You et al., 2009).

Figure 2-8 Cross section of galvanized steel wire cable

2.4.1

Installation of Cable Stay

The cable stays were installed and connected after the decking is moves along and already in place. Each cable was constructed offsite and delivered to specification with the shorted cables fixed in place first to coincide with the deck as it cantilevers out. The cable stays were first lifted into place using cranes and then fixed into position on the decking before being post tensioned from underneath the deck providing active support positions for each cable. Figure 2-9 shows how the cables connected to the girder by using crane and center-hole jacks. In order to ensure the installation of the cable is successfully and behave as expected, the cables were surveyed and the result from the surveying is then compared with the theoretical results (Al-Ammaren, 2009).

Figure 2-9 Cables are connected to the girder one by one by using cranes on the girder and center-hole jacks. Before erections of these stay cable, it also has been tested for fatigue and water tightness and adequate provisions were made in structural details to facilitate future replacement of stays. Dumping tests and cable wind tunnel tests were conducted to determine the wind drag coefficient of the cables, vibration mitigation measures and vibration mitigation effects (You et al., 2009). The installation of temporary stay cables and first erection cable shown in Figure 2-10

Figure 2-10 Installation of temporary cables and first erection cables 2.4.2 Technology Used

One of the technologies used in constructing the cable stayed is a smart cable dumping system. The smart damping system adjusts optimally the damping force to the actual vibration amplitudes and stay cables properties. It was designed to prevent the cable9

stayed Sutong Bridge over the Yangtze River from dangerous cable vibrations (Hagmann, 2007). This technology was applied after the successful of the first project in Franjo Tudjman Bridge where this 222-meter long stay cables vibrated with estimated amplitudes of 1-2 meters during the strong winter storms. The vibrations of cable can be resulted by the combination of the wind-rain effects and traffic. It caused damage on the cable shell and even on some strands that lead to the load capacity safety of the cables and bridge was reduced. By using the adaptive damping system in constructing the cable stayed of Sutong Bridge, the high damping performance at all three damper positions was achieved. All of them were independently of the actual vibration frequency and amplitude (Hagmann, 2007). 2.4.3 Challenge in Constructing the Cable Stay

One of the most significant challenges in the construction of this super-long cable stayed bridge is geometry control. The unique complexity of Sutong Bridge requires specially developed methods and procedures to control the geometry profile and safety of the bridge during the construction period. This is because the cable stay bridges do not need an anchor blocks and the cables are fixed to either side of each tower. This means that the weight of each side of the bridge counters balance the opposite side. The absence of anchor blocks substantially reduces the amount of materials needed and the cost of building the bridge (Ryan, 2006). Another challenge that occurs while constructing this cable-stayed bridge is issue on cable vibration caused by the combination of wind and rain or parametric excitation. In order to minimize the stay cable vibrations, there are two different ways that they have been investigate which are including two kinds of cable surface treatments to prevent rainwater flows from forming on the cables and internal or additional external damping devices (Jiawu et al., 2003). 3 CONCLUSION

After completion, Sutong Bridge created four new world records for cable-stayed bridges includes the longest of 1088m span, the highest main bridge tower with 306m height, the deepest of two foundation piers of the main bridge and the longest stay of the main bridge at 580m. According to Dr. Robin Sham, Director of AECOM who has been involved in this Sutong Bridge projects, wind and construction effects are highly important aspects when designing the long-span bridges since it exist as partial structures during the erection. That is why the special attention needs to be paid to the construction method and sequence in the design phase of the project. In order to construct this long-span bridge, it needs a special skills and a genuine passion to complete the work. The successful construction of Sutong Bridge plays an important role in promoting China to lead the bridge engineering technologies as well as provides valuable experience for similar bridge project in the future.

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REFERENCES Al-Ammaren, A. (2009). A Critical Analysis of the Sutong Bridge Across Yangtze River in China . In Proceedings of Bridge Engineering 2 Conference 2009. American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C, 2004 A policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets ASCE News Volume 35, N. . (2010). China s Sutong Bridge Is Named 2010 OCEA Winner ; OPAL Lifetime Achievement Recipients Honored ;. Retrieved October 20, 2013, from www.asce.org Bittner, R. B., Gerwick, B. C., Zhang, X., Jensen, O. J., & Hansen, O. R. (2004). DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE SUTONG BRIDGE FOUNDATIONS Bridge, 1 16. Chengbin, L., Jianglin, Z., Wei, T., and Jie, D., (2009). Design and Construction Sutong Bridge Tower. Dorman Long Technology. (2013). DLT Project Page. Sutong Cable Stayed Bridge. Deck erection gantries. Retrieved October 17, 2013, from http://www.dormanlongtechnology.com/English/projects/Sutong_gantries.htm Hagmann, M. (2007). A Smart Cable Damping System For Cable-Stayed Bridges. Huixing, R., Xiaoyong, O., Maosheng, H., Qinlong, N., & Xiali, W. (2009). Design and construction of Sutong Bridge deep-water main-pylon foundations. Jiawu, M., Rucheng, X., Minshan, P., Xigang, Z., Martin, P., & Dorian, J. (2003). Global Analysis of the SuTong Cable-Stayed Bridge. Morgenthal, G. (2010). Behaviour of Very Long Cable-Stayed Bridge During Erection. Ryan, V. (2006). A TYPICAL CABLE STAY BRIDGE. Xie, W. (2010). A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SUTONG YANGTZE HIGHWAY BRIDGE,CHINA. In Proceedings of Bridge Engineering 2 Conference 2010. University of Bath, Bath, UK. Yang, J., & Zheng, J. (2009). Project Design and Mechanical Analysis for Sutong Bridge Deck Pavement. New Technologies in Construction and Rehabilitation of Portland Cement Concrete Pavement and Bridge Deck Pavement, 4551. You, Q., Dong, X., & Wu, S. (2008). Challenges and Innovations in the Sutong Bridge Foundation Project. Engineering Sciences, Vol. 6(No.1), 1522. You, Q., He, P., Dong, X., Zhang, X., & Wu, S. (2009). Sutong Bridge-A Cable-stayed Bridge with Main Span of 1088 Meters. IABSE Workshop, Shanghai, China.

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