The operation was controlled by engineers, scientists and a mobile weather station.
Construction of the Crimean bridge across Kerch Strait finally reached the peak. The railway arch weighing more than 6,000 tons was raised to the design height - 35 meters above sea level. The length of the multi-ton structure is 227 meters. There have been no operations of this scale in the Russian bridge building yet.
frame from video
The arch, installed on two pontoon ships, set sail yesterday. A cavalcade of ships with an arch in the middle covered a distance of 4 km in a few hours. At the same time, for the passage of the caravan, it was necessary to carry out preliminary dredging. In fact, a new fairway was dug to move the arch.
The structure was raised to the design height for 12 hours. From an engineering point of view, the process is quite complex and time-consuming, more than 30 slingers, surveyors and quality specialists took part in it. They began to raise the arch at midnight, and finished only in the morning. The rise was carried out with the help of 16 crane installations, and the arch itself was held on 700 cables.
The construction work was broadcast live, so anyone could see this historical moment with their own eyes. When the pontoon barges carefully brought the arch into the alignment between the supports, the most important thing began - the rise, which took place almost a centimeter. To begin with, the arch was raised a meter and left in limbo for an hour. Crane jacks were loaded gradually - starting with a bar of 5 tons, and ending with a maximum load level of 100 tons. The process was observed not only by Internet users and third-party viewers who settled on the shore, but also by scientists. Special sensors were installed on the arched span, thanks to which it was possible to track any changes, including deformation and deflection of the structure. Scientists monitored the lifting and installation throughout the entire time to ensure the correct progress of work and prevent emergencies.
For Russian engineers, the rise has become a kind of know-how, since they had no such experience before. Despite this, the rise and installation took place in the normal mode. As the builders admitted, the first 10 meters were the most difficult - then the process went faster.
- The sea operation in the Crimean Bridge project is, without exaggeration, unique for bridge building: it is transportation, and then lifting and installation in sea waters with an unstable hydrometeorological background. Such an operation would not have been possible without the gigantic experience gained by bridgemen in other projects,” said the Deputy CEO construction organization Leonid Ryzhenkin.
To avoid emergency situations, weather stations were installed on the boats, which regularly monitored weather changes.
“The mobile weather station continuously records the direction and speed of the wind, pressure, humidity levels and visibility,” said Sima Ayvazyan, head of the Crimean Bridge information center.
The arch provides not only railway tracks in both directions. The structure includes inspection passages, lots for cable routes, drainage drains, lightning protection and grounding, strength control systems, air and ship navigation, as well as signaling, mechanized interlocking and blocking functions, communication points and lighting poles. The arch has architectural lighting, so the most fascinating view of it will open at night. According to the Crimean Bridge portal, up to 47 pairs of trains will be able to pass through the bridge per day. Passenger trains will be able to reach speeds of up to 120 kilometers per hour, and freight trains - up to 80.
At the time of the rise of the arch, the passage through the Kerch-Yenikalsky Canal for ships was suspended. The temporary stoppage of navigation did not bring any problems. On Monday morning, only 28 ships were anchored in the port of Kerch, which is almost half the usual number. For example, in bad weather, more than 60 ships anchor.
During September, the builders will finish mounting the end elements of the arch, as well as lower it onto special supports. The next step is to lift and install the car arch, which weighs about five thousand tons. Its installation is also scheduled for September. The road arch has already been assembled and is waiting in the wings on the shore from Kerch. Recall that the Crimean bridge will be the longest in Russia - 19 kilometers, so its construction is not in vain called the "construction of the century." The start of road traffic is scheduled for December 2018, and the first trains from the mainland of the country to the peninsula will depart a year later, on December 1, 2019. The cost of the facility amounted to more than 200 billion rubles.
The pictures were taken by one of the construction participants. It shows that the arch of the future crossing is already rising above the construction site. The huge metal structure impresses with the size and scale of the work done.
On the Kerch side, 70% of the navigable arches of the Crimean Bridge have already been installed, said Leonid Ryzhenkin, Deputy General Director for Infrastructure Projects at Stroygazmontazh LLC.
“The navigable arches of the Crimean bridge are now being assembled on the Kerch side on slipways. More than 7,000 tons of metal structures have already been installed. This is 70% of the total,” Ryzhenkin said.
The railway arch weighs almost six thousand tons, and the automobile arch - four thousand tons, the length of each is more than 200 m. These are the largest structures of the Crimean bridge. Roll-out piers are also being built there, along which the structures will be lowered to the water and transferred to pontoons. Work on the enlargement of spans is carried out around the clock. More than 500 people are involved in them.
Recall that in early April, the head of the Ministry of Transport Maxim Sokolov reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the bridge across the Kerch Strait was being built ahead of schedule. The minister noted that more than half of the piles had already been driven in and said that the equator had already been crossed over the Crimean bridge. It was also added that this is a truly important strategic object of Russia, on which efforts were concentrated to the maximum.
The bridge that will connect the Crimea and Krasnodar region, will pass between the Kerch and Taman Peninsulas, through the island of Tuzla. According to the plan, road traffic will be launched in 2018, and rail traffic in 2019. It will be not only the longest bridge in Russia, but also in Europe, its finished length will be 19 km, and it will “bypass” the Portuguese Vasco da Gama road bridge, which is now leading, which is 17.2 kilometers long.
On August 29, 2017, the railway arch span of the bridge to the Crimea reached an estimated height of 35 meters. Bridge builders announced the completion this stage operations at 9:30 am.
The official site for the construction of the Crimean Bridge reports the details of the rise of the arch.
"The ascent went smoothly"
The structure weighing more than 6,000 tons was lifted with the help of lifting equipment under the supervision of the leading engineers of the project. The process of raising the arch to the design height took about 12 hours.
“The ascent went smoothly. Up to the mark of 10 meters we went more slowly, did a lot of control tests, carried out geodetic control over the state of the structure. Then the main climb began. The arch was raised slightly above the design height for subsequent lowering onto the supporting parts. During the coming day, the structure will be equipped with wind ties - these are devices that fix the arch, ”Krymsky Bridge quotes the words Deputy Director for Production of Mostootryad-1 Mikhail Piksaev.
The arch was raised on 700 cables with powerful jacks fixed on supports. For the installation of the overall structure, 16 devices were required, each with a carrying capacity of 650 tons. This made it possible to increase the margin of safety for lifting mechanisms by 40%.
Jacks were loaded gradually. The initial load of 5 tons was increased to 100 tons. The structure was raised without deviations, within the alignment between the two supports.
Something we can be proud of
The operation began at approximately 19:00 on 28 August. The detachment of the arch span from the floating support occurred at 21:00. At each stage of the ascent, specialists monitored the state of the system, and only then gave the go-ahead to continue work.
After fixing the arch, permission will be given to resume the passage of ships through the Kerch Strait. But from now on and forever they will do it under the grandiose bridge leading to the Crimea.
There are things that we have the right to be proud of. The current operation is unique - for the first time in the history of domestic bridge building, transportation, positioning in maritime conditions and installation from the water on the supports of the overall navigable span. Only a few countries in the world can do this.
Work with the arched span will continue: in the coming month, builders will mount the end elements of the arch, as well as unroll it - lower it onto special supporting parts.
Before walking in the Crimea, not long left
As for the floating supports, they will return to the technological site near the Kerch coast. There, they will be checked and prepared for delivery to the fairway of the arched span of the automobile bridge. This operation is scheduled for September, and the exact timing of its implementation will depend on the readiness of equipment and, most importantly, weather conditions.
The installation of arched spans on the fairway supports of the bridge is a kind of symbolic milestone in construction. After the end of this operation, it will be possible to de facto walk along the bridge under construction from Taman to Crimea and back, which Russian officials had previously promised to journalists.
According to the project, the launch of the automobile part of the bridge should take place in December 2018, the railway part - in December 2019.
Bridge to Crimea, one of the most ambitious Russian projects of the post-Soviet period, is part of the ring road being created around the Black Sea for the needs of the Black Sea states, shortening the road by 450 km without the need for a detour through Rostov-on-Don.
Proof of this is the current operation to install a road arched span, which has no equal in the world - a multi-ton metal structure 227 meters long, they are brought in from the sea to be installed on fairway supports at a height of 35 meters. You can’t call it otherwise than a miracle of technology. The idea to build a crossing across the Kerch Strait has existed since time immemorial, probably even when, in 1783, Prince Potemkin annexed the Crimea to Russia. But communication with the peninsula in this direction for a long time was only by ferry and shipping. Military sappers erected a ferry crossing here at the end of the Great Patriotic War, after the liberation of Crimea from Nazi troops.
But in 1945, the pontoon bridge was destroyed by the movement of ice, which moved from the Sea of Azov. The design itself, intended for river crossings of short length, was not adapted to sea conditions. It was decided to completely dismantle the building and design the construction of a new, more reliable structure.
However, neither in 1949 nor in 1991 developed and even approved projects for the construction of a bridge in the Kerch Bay have not received their real implementation. The complexity of the technical execution of projects (and there were several of them) and the lack of such large-scale funding also affected. They were satisfied with land communication, road and rail, through the territory of the then Ukrainian SSR, present-day Ukraine - then there were no problems on its part.
They returned to the topic of building a bridge in the Kerch Strait in 2003, when Ukraine was already fully slurping its “independence” and considered Crimea its “original” territory. Because of the intention on the part of Russia to build an artificial dam to the island of Tuzla, a serious conflict arose with official Kiev. More than ten long years remained before the return of Crimea, and the scandalous situation hushed up on its own. But even then it became clear that the historical identity of the peninsula would be restored sooner or later. What, in fact, happened as a result of the popular referendum in 2014. And after just some three years, Crimea had the opportunity to receive reliable communication with the mainland.
“It took quite a long time to figure out how to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait,” says Alexander Komarov, an expert and a former official representative of the Russian Railway Troops. - Several projects were envisaged, where the length mattered, because a kilometer of the highway on the ground and over the sea area have significant differences, including in terms of cost. The main construction options included the following projects. "Northern" - from Cape Lantern to Small Kut. The length of the structure would be at least 10 kilometers, while the railway line would have to be pulled 24 kilometers, and the automobile line twice as much. The Zhukovsky route could connect Zhukovka and the Chushka Spit - there are only 6 kilometers, but the access roads of all types of transport are very long. The Yenikalsky project was supposed to stretch from Cape Yenikalino to the Chushka Spit, but even here, with a relatively short distance, everything rested on long-distance access roads. The "Tuzla" direction was seen from Cape Ak-Burun to the island itself - also a very long way. But it was he who became decisive in choosing the site for the construction of the bridge. There are a number of circumstances that made it possible to choose this direction. The new bridge here will not interfere with the already existing ferry service through the ports of Kavkaz and Krym. Again, there are opportunities for further development, including at the expense of space for accommodation building materials. There are opportunities to further ensure the operation of the new bridge. Figuratively speaking, linemen also need to be based somewhere, and preferably in the immediate vicinity of the road.
It is already clear how the Crimean bridge across the Kerch Strait is being built, and the installation of the arched car arch is almost live, and this can be seen on TV news, including on the Zvezda TV channel. Let's briefly look, or rather recall, some of the characteristics of this unique design. The total length of the bridge across the Kerch Strait will be 19 kilometers. Its construction began simultaneously with 8 points. The length of the offshore sections from the Tuzla Spit to Tuzla Island (there is 6.5 kilometers of land) and from the island to Kerch will be 13 kilometers. For the construction of the bridge, about 600 supports and more than 5.5 thousand piles of various sizes are used.
“It is impossible for a non-professional to visually assess the scale of such construction, the picture in TV programs cannot convey the complexity of the tasks performed by bridge builders,” Alexander Komarov continues. - This is not just a huge amount of work, but also the genius of the technical thought of our engineers, the uniqueness of the equipment, including six-hundred-ton jacks, which are now involved in the installation of the arch of the automobile span. It is no coincidence that the Crimean bridge is now called the "eighth wonder of the world" and there is no exaggeration here. But if the construction of the Tower of Babel, a failed miracle of architectural thought, led to a misunderstanding of people speaking different languages, which prevented the construction of the “tower to heaven”, then the bridge across the Kerch Strait, on the contrary, becomes a symbol of unity and friendliness between people.
The Crimean bridge across the Kerch Strait promises to be the largest in Europe. Now the longest bridges in Russia are located in St. Petersburg - the Southern Flyover of the Western High-Speed Diameter, which is a two-story bridge across the Sea Canal and a cable-stayed bridge across the Ship Fairway (9378 meters), as well as the Northern Flyover (8794 meters).
In the world practice of building bridges, the championship is held by China, where the Danyang-Kunshan viaduct is located, railroad bridge, which is part of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, with a length of 164 kilometers. The Qingdao Bridge across the Jiaozhou Bay was also built there, the length of which is 42.5 kilometers. There are long bridges in the USA, Egypt, Japan.
With its more “modest” 19 kilometers, the Crimean bridge impresses not with its length, but with its uniqueness technical technologies, in which one of the main ones is the construction of arched spans at high altitude. After all, the Kerch Strait connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov and there is active shipping, including large-capacity dry cargo ships and cruise liners, which will easily fit under the new bridge. And it really has no analogues in the world.
A video appeared on the Internet showing how bridge builders raised the arched railway span of the Crimean bridge to fairway supports - to a height of 35 meters above sea level. This is reported information Center project "Crimean bridge".
The process of lifting the arch weighing more than 6 thousand tons to the design height took about 12 hours. During the day, the structure will be fixed.
“The ascent went smoothly. Up to the mark of 10 meters we went more slowly, did a lot of control tests, carried out geodetic control over the state of the structure. Then the main climb began. The arch was raised slightly above the design height for subsequent lowering onto the supporting parts. During the coming day, the structure will be equipped with wind ties - these are devices that fix the arch, ”said the deputy director for production of Mostootryad-1.
For the installation of the overall structure, “strands” of high-strength cables were fixed along both edges of the arch span, stretched to the arch from 16 jacks installed at the top of the fairway supports. The arch was raised on 700 cables with powerful jacks fixed on supports. The carrying capacity of each jack is 650 tons, so, despite the weight of the arch of 6,000 tons, the builders provided a 40 percent margin for lifting mechanisms,” the Crimean Bridge Information Center said. Jacks were loaded gradually. The initial load of 5 tons was increased to 100 tons. The structure was raised without deviations, within the alignment between the two supports.
After the “separation” of the arch from the floating system by one meter, it was kept suspended for an hour. During this time, the specialists once again checked the reliability of all mechanisms and only after that continued the ascent.
The floating supports, with the help of which the arch was towed, returned to the Kerch coast. They will be rechecked and re-equipped, after which the second arched arch will be transported and installed in the same sequence. superstructure- road. As a result, two arched spans will rise above the fairway, under which ships will pass unhindered. In the next month, the builders will mount the end elements of the arch, as well as unroll it - lower it onto special supporting parts.
Installing the arches of the Crimean bridge in the design position is a unique technological operation.
For the first time in the history of domestic bridge building, transportation, positioning in sea conditions and installation from the water on supports of an overall navigable span are carried out.
The maritime operation is carried out in conditions of limited navigation with a time "window" of 72 hours. In general, the operation brought together hundreds of specialists - these are sailors, specialized engineers, employees of research institutes and ordinary bridge builders.
For the duration of the operation, navigation along the Kerch-Yenikal Canal was limited. The ban did not apply to ships and vessels of the Navy, as well as federal security agencies. Vessel traffic will resume as normal. The final installation of the arch on the fairway supports will take another month.
The arched span of the railway part of the Crimean Bridge is a combination of a span structure with through main trusses and an arch. The movement of trains goes along the elements of the farm, while the arch in the conditions of such an extended span performs a supporting function. Farm elements and arches are connected by pendants. Span length - 227 m. Height at the highest point - 45 m. Width along the axes of the arches - 20 m in tightening, 5 m in the castle (upper point). Trains run on two tracks. The design provides for inspection passages, cable support systems, drainage trays, lightning protection and grounding, a monitoring system for engineering structures, aeronautical and ship alarms, a centralization and blocking system (CCS), communications and lighting poles, and architectural lighting.
The total cost of the Kerch Bridge will amount to 227.92 billion rubles in the prices of the corresponding years. The bridge will be the longest in Russia, it will connect the Crimean peninsula with the mainland of the Russian Federation by road and rail.
The capacity of the four-lane highway will be 40,000 vehicles per day, Railway will include two tracks with a capacity of 47 pairs of trains per day. The movement of cars on the bridge should open in December 2018, trains - on December 1, 2019. Every day, more than 200 basic pieces of equipment, more than 20 units of watercraft and more than 5 thousand people are involved in the facility.
Kerch Bridge is one of the largest bridges in Russia. Its length is 19 km. The route starts on the Taman Peninsula, passes along the existing five-kilometer dam and Tuzla Island. Then it crosses the Kerch Strait, skirting Cape Ak-Burun from the north, and comes to the Crimean coast.
Earlier, Kyiv expressed that, according to the head of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine Yuriy Lavrenyuk, this will lead to a reduction in the number of ship calls to the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk. This circumstance, in turn, will lead to a decrease in profits. trading operators and administration seaports Ukraine.
