Determining the feasibility that a large Norwegian infrastructure project might include the world’s longest aluminium bridge.
Part of a large infrastructure project in western Norway aimed at building a ferryfree highway across a series of fjords, once completed the Langenuen Suspension Bridge could become the world’s longest aluminium bridge if built with this material instead of steel. The total length of the main suspended span will be 1250 metres.
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Our Approach
With the design team of the Norwegian Public Road Administration (NPRA) as our client, we performed an experimental campaign and complemented it with some numerical assessments. We began by performing comprehensive dynamic and static tests on a sectional model of the bridge deck with three different configurations—one representing the steel bridge deck design and two others representing variations of the concept aluminium bridge design. The tests aimed to verify stability and check the performance of the proposed design alternatives. In addition, we performed a numerical assessment to quantify the effect of traffic on the vortex-induced oscillations performance for the proposed design alternatives.
The Outcome
The Langenuen Bridge marks a major engineering milestone in that is the first time aluminium has been considered and tested for a bridge of this scale and size. Our testing helped to confirm that a main-span aluminium bridge across the Langenuen Strait is a technically feasible alternative to a more conventional steel deck concept, as a major link in the Norwegian infrastructure project aiming to create a ferry-free highway from Kristiansand to Trondheim.