Professional Documents
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Key words: Reinforced concrete arch bridge, long span, construction technology,
cantilever casting
Abstract: The developing trend of long span reinforced concrete arch bridge home and
broad was growing. The way we used was to overcome the unprefabricated place and
inconvenient to set up the arch bridge. After introducing the available construction
technologies in the world, the paper put forward the choices of the way of cantilever
casting construction.
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Pei, Cao, Nie & Xiong: REVIEW OF CANTILEVER CASTING METHOD FOR LONG SPAN RC ARCH BRIDGE
1.INTRODUCTION
Compared with steel arch bridge, reinforced concrete arch bridge has heavier self-weight
and is difficult to be built, but it is cheaper and less maintenance needed. Therefore it has
been widely used in the world. Cantilever method is the most popular construction method
in long span concrete arch bridges. It can be further divided into cantilever launching
method and cantilever casting method. With the span increase, difficulty will increase in the
former method by big hoisting capacity, many assembling segments as well as large yard
for pre-casting. Therefore, the latter one will be the most potential method to be used. In the
trial design research of 600m—1000m super-long concrete arch bridges in Croatia and
Japan, cantilever casting method is adopted.
The cantilever casting method can be further divided into three methods, i.e., Cable-stayed
method with temperate pylons; Temporary truss method as well as composite method.
Cable-stayed method with temperate pylons is a popular method. It has the advantage that
no special requirement to the deck bridge, and it could revise the angle of ropes.
In temporary truss method, truss is formed by the way of supporting the cable-stayed of
arch on the deck of bridge, and we still used the wagon for the concreting of arch. The
broad of bridge had two constructions. One was pretressed concrete deck, the other was
steel main vertical beam. This kind of construction was favorable for the quick building and
fixing up orbital mobile tower crane. After all the perpetual units were installed, it became
one part of cantilever truss construction method and could be operated.
If the deck of bridge selected prestressed concrete, it needed to set up a movable supporting
to casting span by span. While, it had some weak points that, using the way of inclined
cantilever casting to build the big span arch bridge, the errors of some sections influenced a
lot to the quality of the whole project. So we must test and control strictly to the size and
durability of materials.
When the span of a concrete arch is very long, a composite construction method should be
used. In this method, arch ring is divided into three parts. The two side parts can be
constructed by cable-stayed cantilever casting method or cantilever truss method, while the
central part adopt a embedded scaffolding method by hoist vertically the scaffolding and fix
it to the two side parts and make the arch closure, and then cast concrete on the skeleton
frame to form the central part arch ring.
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Pei, Cao, Nie & Xiong: REVIEW OF CANTILEVER CASTING METHOD FOR LONG SPAN RC ARCH BRIDGE
Bai-sha-gou No.1 Bridge in Xi-Pan Expressway is a concrete arch bridge with a span of
150m. It was built by cantilever casting method. The arch ring was divided into 11
segments in a half, except the first segment in spring was cast-in-situ on scaffolding; all the
other 10 were cast by cable-stayed cantilever suspended basket one by one. The cable stays
and back stays are anchored on two separate levels, first one anchoring level is on the portal
pier while the second level is based on temporary steel pylons with a height of 27m in left
side and 36m in right side, as shown in Figure 2.
Bai-sha-gou No.1 Bridge used a wagon with back supporting point which had the
characteristic of front supporting point, as shown in Figure 3.
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Pei, Cao, Nie & Xiong: REVIEW OF CANTILEVER CASTING METHOD FOR LONG SPAN RC ARCH BRIDGE
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Pei, Cao, Nie & Xiong: REVIEW OF CANTILEVER CASTING METHOD FOR LONG SPAN RC ARCH BRIDGE
According to the compare of various of wagon, Bai-sha-gou No.1 bridge adopted a wagon
with back supporting point which had the characteristic of front supporting point.
Figure 3: The wagon for Bai Sha Gou No.1 bridge
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Pei, Cao, Nie & Xiong: REVIEW OF CANTILEVER CASTING METHOD FOR LONG SPAN RC ARCH BRIDGE
If it was a big span cantilever casting, it was not enough to set up a radius of operation of
tower crane. so during the casting, we could set up a changing transport of a little fixed
tower crane, reinforcing bar and model.
3.3.2 Orbiting tower crane
It was suitable for inclined cantilever casting on the surface of bridge. What we did was to
set up moving orbit on the reinforcing beam, and mobile tower crane. It was better to chose
the flat tower crane. Between the reinforcing beams, it needed to set up horizontal
connection to resist the lateral force.
If we constructed it with cable tower cable-stayed fastening for cantilever casting, we could
set up crawl orbit on the arch. And put the moving flat tower crane on it. When it went to
some places, we could fix the foot of tower and change its force. So that, we must pay
attention to the place of fastening cable to avoid colliding.
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Pei, Cao, Nie & Xiong: REVIEW OF CANTILEVER CASTING METHOD FOR LONG SPAN RC ARCH BRIDGE
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Pei, Cao, Nie & Xiong: REVIEW OF CANTILEVER CASTING METHOD FOR LONG SPAN RC ARCH BRIDGE
dissociated in the rock hole, so that, it became an anchor spindle which supplied a stable
force. The theory of it was, we put the pulling force received from the outer anchor unit on
the inner anchor unit, and then , it transferred the spreading affect of inner anchor unit to
the rock soil. The stable force was mainly from the inner ant force of rock. The way was
ever used by the seashore bridge which had the span of 1210M in Sweden, so was the
Bai-sha-guo No.1 Bridge in China.
There were some advantages. Because of the scattered anchor rope, the diameter of rock
hole was small, so it could decrease the damages to the rock and also avoided excavating
the tunnel widely. At the same time, it reduced the degree to stir the rock. Meanwhile, it
was good for receiving force for the anchor of rock hole.
3.5.5 Anchor of tunnel
It was usually suitable for some places which were of solid and completed rock, good
geological condition. The horizontal pulling force was transformed to the tunnel through
anchor-cable and anchor bar, and then transferred to the rock around through adhesion
force.
3.5.6 Composing anchor
If the anchor spindle above could not meet its demands, the composing anchors were
available. Bai-sha-guo No.1 Bridge successfully used the way of composing the platform of
bridge of gravity and anchor of rock hole and prestressed rock anchor.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS
The cantilever casting construction technologies has a history of 50 years. At present time,
people mastered the skill in every section of construction. However, for the reinforced
concrete arch bridge over 400m's span, it needed us to research. It was a wrathful
researching orientation that How to balance itself for the cantilever casting of arch ring. As
far as I'm concerned, it was a good way to make use of symmetry cantilever casting, which
could reduce the weight of anchor spindle as much as possible.
REFERENCES
[1] The Plan of Cantilever Casting Construction of Bai Sha Ditch No.1 Bridge, West Pan
Expressway C12 item
[2] Pei Binjia, Design and Create of Cantilever Casting of Arch Bridge[J] Highway,
2008(1)
[3] Lei Junqin. Construction and Design of Cantilever Casting Construction. Bei Jing: Ren
Min Traffic publishing House.
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