In a major milestone under the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, a 100-metre-long steel bridge has been successfully installed over the tracks of the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) at Bharuch in Gujarat, according to a statement issued by the National Highspeed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL). The bridge is the eighth of the 17 steel bridges being built for the project in Gujarat, while 28 bridges will be constructed for the entire corridor. The bridge weighs around 1,400 metric tonnes and measures 14.6 meters in height and 14.3 meters in width. It was fabricated in Tiruchi and brought to the site through special trailers. It was constructed using an 84-metre-long launching nose weighing around 600 metric tonnes.
The construction process used around 55,300 tor-shear type high strength (TTHS) bolts with C5 system painting and elastomeric bearings designed for a 100-year life. The bridge was assembled on temporary trestles at a height of 18 m and lifted with the help of two semi-automatic jacks of 250-tonne capacity using Mac-alloy bars. The launch was carried out with carefully planned traffic blocks to ensure minimum disruption to freight traffic.
India’s first bullet train corridor, between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, has achieved a major milestone with the construction of a 300-km viaduct. The success was celebrated by launching a 40-meter-long full-span box girder near Surat in Gujarat. NHSRCL said, “Out of 300 km of superstructure, 257.4 km has been constructed through Full Span Launching Method (FSLM) which includes 14 river bridges, 37.8 km through Span by Span (SBS) technique, 0.9 km of steel bridges (10 spans ranging from 60 to 130 m in 7 bridges), 1.2 km of PSC bridges (20 spans ranging from 40 to 80 m in 5 bridges) and 2.7 km of station buildings. A total of 6455 and 925 spans were used to construct 257.4 km and 37.8 km of viaducts using FSLM and SBS techniques respectively.”
