On August 7, the main bridge of the Feilong Yujiang Grand Bridge on the Liqin Railway, part of the Pingtang Jiangkou–Liujing waterway navigational obstruction modification project undertaken by China Railway 16th Bureau Group, officially launched construction of the steel pipe pile cofferdam for the main tower in water, marking the bridge's formal entry into the critical period of underwater main structure construction and laying a solid foundation for enhancing the navigability of the Pinglu Canal.

It is understood that the project is located in Xinfu Town, Hengzhou City, adjacent to the Yujiang waterway of the Liujing Port Area of Nanning Port, approximately 14 kilometers upstream from the Pingtang Jiangkou of the Pinglu Canal, and serves as the core connecting hub linking the Pinglu Canal with the Xijiang River system and the Beibu Gulf waters. The newly built main bridge has a total length of 582.65 meters and adopts a hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge structure. Previously, the navigational clearance height of the original Feilong Yujiang Grand Bridge on the Liqin Railway was only 10 meters, which could not meet the navigational requirements for 5,000-tonne-class river-sea direct vessels passing through the Pinglu Canal into the Yujiang River and reaching Nanning Port directly. To adapt to the 5,000-tonne-class navigation standard of the Pinglu Canal, the project raises the bridge deck rail level by 8 meters overall, increasing the navigational clearance to 18 meters after modification and completely eliminating the original navigational bottleneck of the waterway.

According to the introduction, the project innovatively adopts a scheme of simultaneous construction of locked steel pipe piles and final-stage pile foundation work, which is expected to shorten the critical path duration by 20 days and greatly improve construction efficiency. Up to now, the main bridge has completed 76 pile foundations, 2 pile caps, and 1 pier body, with construction progress steadily under control. The smooth launch of the steel pipe pile cofferdam construction has successfully opened up the key channel for the bridge's underwater main structure construction, overcome the core difficulty of substructure construction, and laid a solid foundation for the rapid construction of subsequent main works.

  Source: Guangxi Cloud - Guangxi Daily