Construction of the world’s largest span suspension bridge, the Jin’an-Jinsha River Bridge, has successfully been completed in China’s Southwest province of Yunnan.
The steel-girder suspension bridge has a main span of 1,386m, making it one of the longest ever built, and a maximum vertical-drop distance of 335m between the bridge deck and the Jinsha River below when it is full. The distance between the top of the bridges main tower and the river surface is approximately 500 meters, placing it at the fourth position in the list of highest bridges in the world.
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The cable crane, whose main cables are made of 169 wire strands, each having 127 nos. of φ5.25 mm and 1 770 MPa prefabricated galvanized parallel steel wires, has a span of more than 1,000m, which is the world’s largest cable crane for mountain bridge construction.
The bridge construction began in 2016 and it is part of the Huaping-Lijiang (Huali) Expressway project.
Huaping-Lijiang Expressway
Completion of the Jin’an-Jinsha River Bridge project is a milestone for the expected completion of the entire Huali Expressway project.
The Huali expressway begins a long rise west out of the Jinsha River gorge from a bridge deck elevation of 1,760m towards Lijiang city’s elevation of 2,400m, gaining elevation largely by punching in and out of several long tunnels.
It is reported that after the project is fully completed, it will fill the gaps in the east-west layout of the expressway networks in Lijiang city and Panzhihua city, making travel between Yunnan and Sichuan more convenient, and at the same time promoting the export of industrial crops and tourism in Lijiang.
A previous plan for the Huali expressway would have taken travelers across an even higher bridge about 20km to the south near the village of Taku.
