At 10:30 a.m. on January 9, with the pouring of the last truckload of concrete, the pouring of the mid-span closure segment of the main bridge of the South-to-North Water Diversion Bridge was completed, marking the successful closure of the South-to-North Water Diversion Bridge and laying a solid foundation for the full opening of the southwestern section of G310 Line in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
The South-to-North Water Diversion Bridge has a center stake number of K42+780.7 and is located about 150 meters south of the Southwest Ring Expressway in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province. The bridge deck is 34.5 meters wide in total and crosses the main canal in a single span. The superstructure of the main bridge is an (85+160+85) meter single-cable-plane prestressed concrete partial cable-stayed bridge with double-limb V-shaped cable towers. The entire bridge has 32 pairs of stay cables. The main girder is a prestressed concrete box girder with a single-box three-cell inclined web section.
Since construction began in October 2019, in response to the characteristics of the South-to-North Water Diversion Bridge—large (large-volume concrete construction, super-large friction pendulum seismic isolation force-measuring bearings), long (long segments), heavy (heavy cable saddles), special (special V-shaped cable tower structure), precise (precise alignment control and precise cable duct installation), and strict (strict environmental and water protection requirements)—the construction unit addressed construction challenges including high environmental protection requirements for crossing the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, complex forces on the V-shaped cable towers, difficult installation and positioning of long and heavy cable saddles, difficult alignment control in cantilever pouring construction of long segments on a wide bridge deck, and high precision requirements for cable duct installation. Technical personnel conducted repeated investigations, demonstrations, comparisons, tests, summaries, and innovations. After more than 450 days and nights of arduous work and two years of scorching summers and cold winters, the builders overcame a series of technical difficulties one by one. Finally, an efficient and practical construction method was formulated, adopting BIM modeling + extra-large full-section form traveler + integrated cable tower pouring + portal-shaped bracket cable saddle positioning, and the main bridge was successfully closed. Stay cable construction adopted a three-hole intelligent cable threading machine + intelligent tensioning system + pressure detection system, achieving efficient construction and precise control of cable forces, and providing technical support for the construction of similar projects in the future. The unique separated double-limb V-shaped cable tower is the first of its kind in China, and the 6-meter-long form traveler cantilever pouring segment is the longest in China.
The bridge spans the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, where environmental protection requirements are of a high level. During construction, the construction unit always maintained tidiness and order, civilized construction, and cleared all materials upon completion. They overcame difficulties such as the high difficulty of construction across the canal, the high difficulty of on-site coordination and organization, the high precision requirements for embedded steel pipes for stay cables and form traveler movement, and the high monitoring requirements for cantilever structure construction and difficult alignment control, ensuring that clear water is delivered to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.