Today' Yangtze River, all kinds of cross-river bridges have approached more than 100, and the number is still constantly updating. No, on the Grand Canyon of the Trough River in Qiannan, Guizhou Province, China has added a new super project that amazes the world, which is the Pingtang Bridge. With an investment of 1.5 billion yuan and a height of 332 meters, Pingtang Bridge is currently the highest concrete bridge in the world, known by locals as a highway above the clouds!
Guizhou Province is located in the mountains of southwest China, where steep mountains and rivers have run through since ancient times, making it extremely difficult for people to travel, hindering the local residents' exchanges and exchanges with the outside world. There are also a large number of Hmong compatriots living here, who are full of mysteries and legends for outsiders.
Since the beginning of this century, with the economic development and the gradual implementation of the state's policy of developing the greater southwest, the state has begun to build roads, railways, and airports in Yunnan, Guizhou, and other southwestern provinces and autonomous regions on a large scale, thus establishing a three-dimensional multi-level transportation network for the southwest region.
The Pingtangte Bridge was built against this background, and it is an important part of the Yuqing-Anlong Expressway. Pingtangte Bridge, which opened to traffic on December 30, 2019, is a three-tower cable-stayed bridge with a total length of 2135 meters and a width of 30 meters, four lanes in both directions, and a design speed of 80 kilometers per hour. This bridge spans the Grand Canyon of the Trough River, the highest point is 332 meters from the ground, and the construction of a bridge with a height of more than 300 meters and a span of 2 kilometers in the lofty mountains is a big problem for the world's bridge building field.
The Mountain Grand Canyon is not only dangerous terrain but also often windy, which puts forward higher requirements for the safety of bridges. Half a century ago, the Tacoma Strait Bridge in the United States was blown down by a strong wind just four months after its completion, which is a bitter lesson in the history of bridge construction. The Tacoma Strait Bridge has elastic tremors due to gas, which is simply that the wind deforms the object, which causes a greater deformation, which is enough to break through the rigid critical point of the object and destroy the object.
The instantaneous wind of the Grand Canyon of the Trough River is far greater than the wind that blew down the Tacoma Bridge that year, so after learning the lessons of the Tacoma Bridge, the Pingtangte Bridge did not adopt the ordinary double-tower cable-stayed bridge, but adopted the structure of the three-tower cable-stayed bridge.
During the construction of the bridge, engineering and technical personnel used and invented a number of new bridge construction technologies. For example, the construction of bridge piers, the three piers of this bridge are more than 300 meters high, and 300 meters is equivalent to the height of 70 floors. Building such a high pier between the valleys is both to ensure quality and to protect the safety of construction workers, which is difficult to do with general methods. Engineers invented a technique called "hydraulic climbing die" to complete the construction of the pier on schedule under the guarantee of the quality of pier construction and the safety of construction workers.
This is just one problem in the construction process, and there are countless problems encountered in the construction process, because no one has built such a large span bridge at such a steep and high height before. Engineers and workers worked together to overcome every problem that arose and accumulated valuable experience for bridge construction.
The Pingtang Special Bridge is beautifully designed, it stands between the valleys of clouds and mist, looming, and reflects the surrounding environment, which is a new landscape in Guizhou Province. Including the PingtangTe Bridge, 47 of the world's top 100 high bridges are located in Guizhou.
As the old saying goes, Guizhou has no three-foot flat land, and now the viaduct bridges span the mountain ravines and connect cities, towns and villages. People who have lived in the mountains of Guizhou for generations no longer worry about traveling, they can easily and quickly go out of the mountains to the outside world, and people outside can easily come to Guizhou to explore the ancient legends.
With the completion of the transportation network in Guizhou Province, Guizhou Province ushered in a new development, and people's impression of Guizhou is no longer stuck in the mellow aroma of Moutai wine, the mystery of Miaojiang, and the difficulty of mountain roads. The completion of the transportation network in Guizhou Province has truly connected Yunnan-Guichuan, and the future Guizhou will no longer be a closed, poor and backward Guizhou.
From "the ground is not three feet flat" to today's "World High Bridge Museum", Guizhou has ushered in a magnificent turnaround. If you have time, friends can drive to Guizhou, drive on the majestic buildings similar to the Pingtang Bridge, to appreciate the beautiful mountains and rivers of Guizhou, and taste the local simple folk customs.