On January 31, 2021, the Jiantan Dongjiang Grand Bridge on the Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway successfully completed closure, 8 days ahead of schedule. With a total length of 925.74 meters, the bridge is currently the world's largest-span four-track ballastless-track concrete cable-stayed bridge. As a controlling project of the entire line, the bridge's closure has laid a solid foundation for the Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway to be completed and opened to traffic by the end of this year.
At exactly 10:00 a.m. on January 31, 2021, as the bridge closure commander issued the operation order, all construction procedures on the bridge deck were meticulously deployed and coordinated in an orderly manner, and the closure proceeded in a tense and orderly fashion. At 10:40 a.m., the closure segment of the Dongjiang Grand Bridge completed the final concrete pouring, marking the bridge's early achievement of closure and laying a solid foundation for the early completion and opening of the Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway. The Jiantan Dongjiang Grand Bridge has a total length of 925.74 meters, a main span of 260 meters and a deck width of 31.2 meters. It is a controlling project of the entire Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway and is currently the world's largest-span and widest four-track ballastless-track concrete cable-stayed bridge. The 820-tonne weight of Block 15 of the bridge set a new national record for the heaviest single bridge segment.
The Jiantan Dongjiang Grand Bridge on the Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway was constructed by CCCC Third Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd. Since entering the site in early 2018, the builders have weathered wind and rain. Over three years and nearly 1,100 working days, in order to overcome the impact of typhoons and floods during construction, especially the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the construction party scientifically and reasonably arranged the schedule, allocated personnel, mobilized all positive factors that could be mobilized, and used one day as two. After nearly a year of accelerated construction, the bridge closure was finally achieved eight days ahead of the original plan.
The Jiantan Dongjiang Grand Bridge is divided into 135 segments, 2 main towers and 20 pairs of stay cables. The bridge girder is huge, the tower-girder structure is complex, and the alignment control requirements for the whole bridge are high. In order to implement environmental protection requirements and ensure construction progress, the construction unit, the Shenzhen Engineering Construction Command of Guangzhou Railway Group, and the contractor CCCC Third Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd. determined the optimal construction plan after repeated precise calculations and optimization comparisons: the main pier of the bridge was designed with a set of double-wall self-floating new cofferdam platform structural system, which also served as a deep foundation pit cofferdam and pile foundation construction platform, forming a fully enclosed space and eliminating hidden pollution risks to the Dongjiang water area during construction. Tests by the Huizhou water quality monitoring station showed that the water quality of the surrounding waters reached the national Class I standard.
It is understood that due to the large volume of concrete required for the bridge deck width, the cantilever pouring method with form travelers was adopted for symmetrical pouring construction. During the lifting process, two 350-tonne cranes and dozens of on-site management personnel, technicians, safety officers and lifting teams had to be organized simultaneously for synchronous operation, and the tilt angle was controlled for rotation in the air, so that the 16-tonne main truss segment was successfully lifted in one operation onto the pier more than 30 meters high.
According to reports, the Jiantan Dongjiang Grand Bridge on the Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway has set multiple domestic and world records. During construction, the bridge obtained three utility model patents: "A Main Pier of a Long-Span Cable-Stayed Bridge," "A Preloading Structure for the Main Pier Bracket of a Long-Span Cable-Stayed Bridge," and "A Steel Boxed Cofferdam for Pier Cap Construction"; and two invention patents: "An Installation Process for a Steel Boxed Cofferdam Used in Pier Cap Construction" and "A Method for Erecting a Trestle Bridge for Bridge Construction."
At present, the offline works and online girder erection of the entire Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway have been basically completed, and the project is accelerating in all aspects toward track laying and electrification construction, laying the foundation for completion and opening to traffic by the end of this year. The Ganzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway is the southernmost section of the Beijing-Kowloon High-Speed Railway. The line runs through the five cities of Ganzhou, Heyuan, Huizhou, Dongguan and Shenzhen in Jiangxi and Guangdong provinces, with a main line length of 432 kilometers, a designed maximum speed of 350 kilometers per hour, and is scheduled to be completed and opened to traffic by the end of this year. After the project is completed and opened to traffic, the travel time from Ganzhou to Shenzhen will be shortened from the current 7 hours to 2 hours. By then, Ganzhou will be integrated into the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area radiation belt, which is of great significance for implementing the national "Revitalization and Development Plan for the Former Central Soviet Area in Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong."