On the 15th, with the precise hoisting and welding of the final arch rib section, the 140-meter basket arch of the Yun'an Grand Bridge spanning the new National Highway 316 on Section 2 of the Hankou–Shiyan High-Speed Railway, built by China Construction, was successfully closed. This basket arch is the largest-span constant-section tied-arch basket arch in China's high-speed rail network.
The basket arch of the Yun'an Grand Bridge is located in Yunmeng County, Xiaogan City, and was constructed by the Infrastructure Company of China Construction Third Engineering Bureau. It spans the new National Highway 316, whose roadway is 22 meters wide, with a total span of 140 meters. It is a through-type concrete-filled steel tube basket tied-arch bridge, with a shape resembling a basket handle. The clear height from the bottom of the basket arch girder to the road surface is about 5 meters. The bridge has four steel tube arch ribs in total, with the arch axis adopting a quadratic parabola, composed of steel tubes with an outer diameter of 1.3 meters and a thickness of 20 millimeters, forming a basket shape.
It is reported that the successful closure of the basket arch spanning the new National Highway 316 on the Hankou–Shiyan High-Speed Railway effectively ensures the smooth progress of subsequent ballastless track construction, and also sets a new record for the largest span in the construction of constant-section tied-arch basket arches in China's high-speed rail sector.
The reporter learned that the various sections of the Hankou–Shiyan High-Speed Railway within Xiaogan, Suizhou, Xiangyang, and Shiyan in Hubei Province are progressing in an orderly manner. The Hankou–Shiyan High-Speed Railway has 13 stations along its entire route, with a total length of 399 kilometers and a design speed of 350 kilometers per hour. Construction started in December 2015 and is planned to be completed in four years. After completion, the train travel time from Hankou to Shiyan will be shortened to within 2 hours, and Wuhan to Xiangyang will take only 1 hour.