The Padma Bridge is located in the lower reaches of the Padma River. The main bridge is a 6.15-kilometer-long double-deck steel truss bridge for both road and rail. The upper deck is a four-lane expressway and the lower deck is a single-track railway. At the same time, the bridge also reserves pipelines for carrying other line equipment such as natural gas and optical cables. As one of the important channels of the "Pan-Asia Railway" connecting China and Southeast Asia, the Padma Bridge is affectionately called the "Bridge of Dreams" by the Bangladeshi people.
The bridge has a total of 40 underwater piers. Initially, each main pier was designed to consist of 6 super "giant" steel piles with a diameter of 3 meters, a length of 120 meters and a weight of 550 tons, like a "six-legged stool". However, due to the large geological differences at the pier locations, basically each underwater pier needs to be "tailor-made" and can only be designed, changed and constructed at the same time. China Railway Nine Bridge, a subsidiary of China Railway Industry, undertook the manufacturing task of about 140,000 tons of process test piles and main bridge steel pipe piles. During the period, it experienced multiple design changes. After the changes, the manufacturing difficulty of steel pipe piles increased, especially the welding workload increased greatly. Faced with difficulties, the project team did not wait or rely on others, but actively deployed production resources to complete the main bridge steel pipe pile manufacturing task ahead of schedule.
"In order to firmly drive the steel piles into the riverbed, China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd. specially purchased the world's second largest power hydraulic pile hammer MHU2400 at that time." The MHU2400 hammer underwent 10 dismantling and major maintenance on the Padma Bridge, with a total of 2.6 million hammerings, which exceeds the total number of hammerings for steel piles in any bridge construction project worldwide. Shen Tao, executive deputy manager of the Padma Bridge Project Department of China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group, introduced that the project department successively mobilized 5 sets of the world's most advanced pile hammers, and 3 sets were broken during the construction process, which shows the difficulty of the project. The main bridge of Padma Bridge is a 150-meter-span steel truss structure. The entire span of the steel beam is fully welded with thick plates and is installed by whole-span lifting. The entire span weighs 3,200 tons, making it the heaviest and longest single-span integral steel beam structure in the world. China Railway Shanhaiguan Bridge, a subsidiary of China Railway Industry, undertook the task of manufacturing all the bridge steel structures of 125,800 tons, and successively solved world-class bridge manufacturing problems such as ultra-thick steel plate welding, ultra-large truss three-dimensional assembly, and 3,000-ton full-span shifting steel truss three-dimensional assembly.
China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd. adopted the independently developed "Tianyihao" beam transport and erection integrated ship with a lifting capacity of 3,600 tons to take on the important task. Since the construction channel is often affected by siltation and the riverbed is constantly changing, large ships such as "Tianyihao" sometimes run aground, so it is necessary to dredge the channel from time to time during the construction process. "From 2015 to now, the project department has excavated more than 40 million cubic meters of silt, which can fill up four West Lakes." Shen Tao said. The project team was not afraid of difficulties. Through scientific and meticulous construction organization, it successfully overcame adverse construction conditions such as hurricanes, floods, and channel siltation, and successfully completed the steel beam erection task.
Our company participated in the project and produced British standard UC356X406X551,UC356X406X634 S355JO 5000 tons overweight H-beam.
