Engineering characteristics and key techniques of Qingzhou Ship Channel Bridge of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge

The Qingzhou Ship Channel Bridge of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is a steel box girder cable-stayed bridge with double pylons and double cable planes. In the design of the bridge, a variety of the new materials, new techniques and new workmanships have been applied. In this paper, the engineering characteristics and key techniques of the bridge are summarized. On the bridge, the steel box girders of the same structural types of the adjacent non-navigable span bridges are fully used as the counterweight and on the outer side spans of the bridge, the stay cables are not installed. The arrangement of the bridge in such a way is well appropriate to the local conditions of the bridge site and has notable comprehensive advantage. The structural support system of the bridge is the three-way system that can ensure the structural performance of the whole bridge to be optimal. The pylons have the crisscross steel struts of the Chinese Knot configuration, which are connected with the concrete pylon columns via the connecting boxes in a combined force transmitting mode of compression-shear and the performance of the steel struts and connection is safe and reliable. The foundations for the bridge are the composite piles of variable diameter steel pipes and together with the reinforced concrete in the steel pipes, the composite sections of the piles that are to jointly bear the loads and are cost-saving and rational are formed. The pier shafts are formed by the precast segments. The segments are installed at the site and are connected each other by the φ75 mm thick prestressing bars. The steel box girders are of the optimized streamlined flat sections topped with the orthotropic steel deck plates and the fatigue performance of the girders are quite superior. The stay cables are the ones made up of the parallel steel wires and having tensile strength of 1860 MPa.