Read the text. At the turn of the new millennium Russia has displayed impressive achievements in bridge engineering and architectural merit of bridge structures

At the turn of the new millennium Russia has displayed impressive achievements in bridge engineering and architectural merit of bridge structures. The road bridge across the Ob River in Sourgut was put into operation on September 16, 2000 and established a record among single tower cable-stayed structures with the total span length of 408 m. Its design and construction allowed domestic bridge building to develop new methods of theoretical calculation, experimental investigation, fabrication methods, and erection of complicated structures in the severe climatic conditions of the northern areas.

It is worth noting that the Sourgut Bridge has helped Russian scientists and engineers to overcome the psychological barrier which prevented them from using state-of-art foreign technology and achievements in bridge engineering. Having built this bridge, Russian engineers proved their ability to meet the challenges of bridge engineering under modern economic conditions.

The architectural merits of the Sourgut Bridge are truly captivating. The stiffening girder, coated in orange paint, is 576 m long, and its minimum height of 3.6 m is equal to 1/160 of its length. The wind fairings resemble spaceships, and the towers look like two orange arrows daringly raised up to 149 m in height. The tower cross bracing produces an impression of a lace-like net, and the bridge front bracing, involving the legs with a constant width of 3.6 m, increases the beauty, that is in the eye of the beholder. A practically invisible web of stay cables, which are put together almost in a bundle at the anchor pier, connect the tower with the stiffening girder under different angles (from 20° to 70°). During the evening the bridge is effectively illuminated.

The road bridge, in the city of Khanty-Mansyisk, over the Irtysh River, built in 2004, is a unique structure. Firstly, a suspension bridge was considered but finally a combined metal structure, in the spirit of the XXI century was adopted. The half-through arch span is followed by a continuous beam and the trussed girder with top and bottom polygonal chords. Citizens call the bridge by the endearing nickname of “A sleeping baby dinosaur”. The main five-span structure is 231 m long which is the third longest in Russia after the cable-stayed bridges in Sourgut and St. Petersburg.

The cable-stayed road bridge in St Petersburg, built in 2004, is the first unobstructed passage over the Neva River. It provides unobstructed sailing for ships of the “river-sea” class, up to 30 m high. The total span length is 2, 570 m and the bridge is the most complicated section of the ring road around St. Petersburg. The three-span cable-stayed structure has a metal stiffening girder, and its main span is 382 m long thus it is the second longest in Russia after the record span length (408 m) of the Sourgut Bridge. This multi-cable-stayed system was constructed by cantilever erection and simultaneous cable stays fastening both towers which are 125 m high above the river bed. The bridge floor is 19 m wide and has four expressway lanes. During the celebratory event, when the bridge came into operation, the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin said “This bridge has proved that the best traditions of our engineering school are alive, they are steadily developing in accordance with the highest standards and using the state-of-art technologies”.

The unique bridge which crosses the Moskva River at an angle of just under 16° (almost along the river) was constructed at the Silvery Pine Forest within the city of Moscow in 2007. The design was commissioned by the Science Production Association - ‘Bridge Builder’. The structure represents a system whereby a cable-stayed structure is combined with a beam, and the tower is built as a trussed arch. Fan shaped arrangements of cable-stays produce the spatial curvilinear surfaces. Such cable stay layouts provide the required vertical, horizontal and torsion stiffness for the structure. A spirally twisted system of cable-stayed suspenders produces a specific visual effect – “the falling thread-like web which emerges from the rainbow suspended over the river”. During the evening hours the bridge looks mysterious because of the great arch height. The illumination gradually weakens which turns into dimmed lighting, at the upper arch sections, and creates a magic visual illusion of the unearthly structure vanishing from sight. This visual sensation deepens due to the unusual shape and lightning of the coffee bar suspended at a height of 100 m above the ground. It is beyond all doubt that the Silvery Pine Forest Bridge will prove to be a tourist attraction in the Russian capital.

A unique cable-stayed bridge is to be built in the city of Vladivostok by 2012. This double-towered structure will connect the city with the Russian Island by a record span of 1, 104 m. The general contractor – the building company “Bridge” – is headed by V.V. Kostylev who graduated from the “Bridges and Tunnels” Faculty of Siberian State University of Railway Engineering in 1975.

The Baikal-Amur Trunk Line (1974-2001) has greatly influenced Russian tunnel engineering and updated technical knowledge. Many graduates of the “Bridges and Tunnels” Faculty took active part in construction of railway tunnels in this trunk line. Four cape intersecting tunnels with their total length of 5.4 km were built in the western district of the BAM. One of longest tunnels in Russia, the Baikal Tunnel which length is 6.7 km, was also constructed in the western district of the Baikal-Amur Trunk Line. Another three long tunnels were built in the BAM Central District.

The length of the Kodarsky tunnel is 2.0 km long, the next is the Dousse-Alinskyi Tunnel which is 1.8 km in length, and the length of Nagornyi (Upland) Tunnel is 1.3 km.

But the Northern-Muya Tunnel is the longest and most complicated railway tunnel in Russia. Its length is 15, 343 m however if you include all the underground openings and transporting drainage raises and shafts it increases the length by almost 100 km. The tunnel laying depth ranges from 300 m to 1, 800 m, and its construction lasted for 27 years under severe conditions. The sharp continental climate in this region is characterized with temperature swings from +35°С to -56°С, and the estimated seismic activity is equal to a 9-point earthquake on the Richter scale. The completion of this tunnel construction was a notable engineering feat, and the scheduled opening was on December 21, 2001.

The horse-shaped cross section of the main railway tunnel is 60 m², and has a monolithic-reinforced concrete lining. The diameter of the circular shaped tunnel portals and tunnel sections, at the fracture zones, is about 9.5 m. These sections are supported with a cast lining. The cross-section of the transporting drainage raise, which lays parallel to the tunnel, at a distance of 15 m, is 18 m². It has a monolithic or precast concrete lining.

The tunnel is driven through the massif with tectonic deformation and fracture zones up to 900 m wide, and with layers of thermal water with temperature ranges from +2°C to +45°C. The tunnelling faced such challenges as huge amounts of spontaneous water and sand inrushes at Angarakanskaya Depression. The unsound geological conditions were such that water inflow gushed in jets that included fine-dispersed rock debris material which volume exceeded hundreds of cubic metres per hour, under hydrostatic pressure of up to 5 MPa.

While constructing the Northern-Muya Tunnel the scientists, designers and tunnel builders implemented, through consensus, many newly-developed engineering achievements: combining of horizontal and vertical dewatering wells at a depth of 300 m; application of chemical grouting in the tunnel face at a great length; putting into practice the pipe barrier method to overcome fracture zones.

Several original vehicular tunnels were built in Russia after 2000, in accordance with the plan for the development of southern Russia. The Matsesta tunnel (1.35 km) and the Red Glade Tunnel (2.45 km) were built in the immediate vicinity of Sochi, and two new tunnels between the city of Adler and Red Glade District were built to enhance the road network in this region.

The Winter Olympic Games in 2014 are stimulating the construction of a new railway branch which is 48 km long and runs parallel to the expressway from the Adler airport to the Red Glade downhill skiing sports complex. About a dozen of the most complicated railway and vehicular tunnels are to be built between 2009 and 2014 to cross this mountainous district. Such a rapid pace in tunneling and construction is unprecedented in the history of Russian tunnel engineering.

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