Bridge_Project

media type="youtube" key="biflwkYSq4Y" height="385" width="480" align="center"
 * The tallest bridge ever constructed **

A bridge is a structure that spans and provides a passage over a road, railway, river, or some other obstacle. Bridges break down separation and foster connectedness. There are three major types of bridges: The beam bridge, the arch bridge and the suspension bridge and the biggest difference between this three is the distances they can cross in a single span. A benefit of bridges is that bridges allow easy travel across major rivers and estuaries, over the new obstacles of motorways and railway lines, and between neighboring islands, so efficient distribution networks depend on bridges. And since 2004 the world known the Millau Bridge, a bridge that is not only the world tallest, it’s unlike any bridge ever constructed, because no bridge builders ever attempted a multiple span, single line cable stay bridge on this scale before. In the 1980’s France built a freeway linking Paris directly with Spain, the freeway was been build since Paris in south direction and since Spain in north way, until they both hit one of the deepest valleys in France and stop it. The town of Millau is located in south at France and it’s one of the most tranquil parts of France, but in summer this poor medieval town suffered a traffic hell because before the bridge was constructed, traffic had to descend into the Tarn River valley and pass along the route national near the town of Millau, causing heavy congestion at the beginning and end of the July and August vacation season and the locals couldn’t take it anymore. It is clear exactly why the bridge was needed. And then, Michel Virlogeux, a designer known by his work with the Normandy Bridge in north at France, had a plan to Millau, which consist in another cable stay bridge but pushing the technology beyond anything previously attempted, with piers four times higher than in the Normandy Bridge. The Millau Bridge also had the help of architect Lord Norman Foster, who wanted to turn an elegant peace of engineering into a delicate butterfly, but his butterfly has to support the weight of five Eiffel towers, so getting the design wrong would be a disaster. To give the required strength to the enormous piers, the molds were filled with a frame of steel reinforced bars, in total 16 thousand tons of the steel bars. The shape of each pier was seriously complicated, as a result each time the workers remove the sections of red steel shattering, they had to change the shape of the mold to fit the profile of the next four meters section. Once the piers were already built, to avoid death of any of the bridge builders, the team decided to fabricate the entire road deck on the safety of the solid ground, this meant to build it in steel, which in theory will be much safer that lifting vast concrete sections hundreds of meter into position, and, only one steel manufacture had the courage to take on this colossal challenge, Eiffel, the steel firm set up by the great French engineer, Eiffel director Marc Buonomo knew he was taking a serious risk, this immense work involved manufactured 2200 separated sections weighting up to 90 tons and some of them were 22 meters long. Then, the pieces arrived from the steel manufacture to a side of the valley on where they were welded together but then, getting that enormous road deck to span a valley on the top of the world’s tallest bridge piers was a major challenge, they were the first team that put a road deck on a pier taller that and 18th history skyscraper. But then, pushing bridge building beyond anything attempted before, they climb to slide the entire 2 and a half kilometer road deck over in to colossal pieces. The bridge's chief engineer Jean-Marie Crémer was one of the few people who believed it could be done; so for the result to be a successful he and Marc Buonomo came up with the solution, the trick was to use a series of launching systems, to jack up the deck and inched forward from either side of the valley, each system used a lifting wedge, a pushing block, one pushing and one pulling cylinder and some balancing cylinders in the bottom of the system. Finally, when the bridge was completed, its consequences were seen, the good news were that because of the bridge the town no longer collapsed in the summer by traffic but on the other hand now the number of visitors who came to the town clearly declined which seriously affects the town community that once was economically privileged of all visitors who had to cross the town. And the major consequence of the bridge was to itself, because it became a main tourist destination with 7 hundred thousand visitants in the first nine month; people were amazed because it’s a well built structure but also because it’s incredibly beautiful, delicate and stunning, not what anyone expects from a structure that is nearly a three times higher than any other bridge in the planet, and architect Lord Norman Foster achieved his aim, to give the driver the sensation of soaring. This is the longest pure cable stay bridge in the world, the tallest roadway in the world and of course, placed at the height of 3 hundreds and 43 meters, it is the tallest bridge ever constructed.