Chenab Rail Bridge: The Tech Behind the World’s Highest Railway Bridge

Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest rail bridge and arch bridge in the world, is all set to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. The inauguration ceremony is for the 63 km stretch of the Katra-Sangaldan part, a part of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL), which additionally contains the Chenab bridge. Apart from that, the PM will even inaugurate the Anji Bridge, which is India’s first cable-stayed rail bridge.

After the inauguration, Modi will even flag off the first Vande Bharat Train to journey on the world’s highest arch bridge, making it totally operational. The bridge, which can also be being known as an engineering marvel, required the use of state-of-the-art equipment and human craftsmanship. To underpin the know-how behind the mission, we now have listed the prime 5 issues to learn about the Chenab Rail Bridge.

Chenab Rail Bridge: An Overview

The Chenab Rail Bridge is constructed over the Chenab River in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir. Constructed utilizing metal and concrete, it covers a distance of 1,315m throughout the river gorge. The size of the most important arch is 467m (linear) and 550m (curvilinear). Under the government company of the Konkan Railway Corporation, the development mission was dealt with by Afcons Infrastructure. The bridge value Rs. 1,486 crore to assemble and has an anticipated lifespan of 120 years.

Hoisted 359m above the riverbed, the Chenab Rail Bridge supersedes the Daduhe River Railway Bridge in China as the world’s highest rail bridge. As per Afcons, it’s 35m taller than the Eiffel Tower. The mission required the fabrication of 28,660 metric tonnes (MT) of metal. The construction is designed to deal with trains travelling at the pace of 100kmph and wind speeds of 266kmph.

Tech Behind the Chenab Rail Bridge

• Coming to the design, the bridge makes use of a two-rib metal arch design with an open spandrel development. Open-spandrel implies that the rail deck sits on vertical helps rising from the arch as an alternative of being steady. Weathering metal was used for the development of the bridge, which is corrosion resistant and permits for temperature variation between -20 levels Celsius to 45 levels Celsius.
• Each phase of the bridge weighs 34 MT and was erected utilizing the assist of the world’s tallest cable crane with a 127m excessive pylon, Afcons stated. That is taller than the Qutub Minar.
• The Chenab Rail Bridge is designed to bear earthquake forces of the highest depth zone-V in India. To be certain that the construction is safe, Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing machines had been used to check the welds, a primary in Indian Railways. Interestingly, the bridge required roughly 5,84,000km of welding to affix completely different elements — about the identical distance between Jammu Tawi and New Delhi.
• Throughout the bridge, structural well being monitoring (SHM) methods have been positioned. More than 100 sensors have been put in that monitor wind parameters, environmental situations, structural responses resembling vibration and cargo, and extra. These sensors continuously ship information to alert mechanisms.
• If any of the values are discovered to be past the security parameters, it triggers a purple sign to halt practice operations and sounds alarms to alert station masters and management rooms. The well being monitoring of the bridge is being dealt with by Tranz Rail Solutions together with Strainstall, a part of the James Fisher group.