View Full Version : World's tallest bridge under construction
byronleehk
10-07-2004, 07:12 AM
The world's tallest bridge is under construction on the A75 autoroute in Southern France.
OMG it would be light flying, not driving! :eek:
Wouter Melissen
10-07-2004, 07:21 AM
Where exactly is that in France? I'll have to go down there, when it's finished.
Lagonda
10-07-2004, 08:00 AM
Viaduc de Millau :) Between Clermond-Ferrand and Béziers/Montpellier
official website: http://www.viaducdemillaueiffage.com/
byronleehk
10-07-2004, 08:28 AM
Do you think they're going to charge tolls for using them :confused:
Matra et Alpine
10-07-2004, 08:37 AM
Awesome.
Never happen in the UK, the environmentalists would get it stopped for ruining the views from mummies country house :(
Definately sounds like a need for a trip to south of France
EvilPaladin
10-07-2004, 08:37 AM
Already finished, it will open in December.
PerfAdv
10-07-2004, 08:51 AM
Environmentalists always complain but this bridge impacts the land very little. Traffic passes far above the unspoiled valley. Very elegant.
Matra et Alpine
10-07-2004, 08:57 AM
Looking on the web site , it IS a toll :(
But there is worse and I may now NOT want to go on it :)
The designer, Lord Norma Foster, is (IN)famous for his Millenium Bridge in London.
Looks spectacular and had to be closed and only recently had all the strengthening work done to stop it swaying so badly.
There's a clip of it ( but lo-Q :( ) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events2000/mbridge/mbridge_boetcher22nov.ram
Hope the French construction folks made him do his calculations twice this time !!!!!
McLareN
10-07-2004, 08:58 AM
Thats a great and new idea, i think that it is a magnificent structure.
Matra et Alpine
10-07-2004, 08:58 AM
Environmentalists always complain but this bridge impacts the land very little. Traffic passes far above the unspoiled valley. Very elegant.
Yeah, but in the UK they complain about the look.
We've had bypasses blocled which CLEARLY showe benefit to the environment.
NIMBY is strong amongst the tree-huggers AND "townies" :(
werty
10-07-2004, 09:04 AM
thats cool. but why did they want to make it soo tall? whats the purpose? :confused:
Sweeney921
10-07-2004, 09:33 AM
they had no choice
Niko_Fx
10-07-2004, 10:10 AM
That is almost unbelievable. Amazing, must be a great trip to take.
Matra et Alpine
10-07-2004, 02:32 PM
thats cool. but why did they want to make it soo tall? whats the purpose? :confused:
It's a deep valley.
The original road winds it way down one side, across the bottm and up winds it way back up the other side.
If you explore the site, it shows you many pictures of the locale and it's clear then.
Esperante
10-07-2004, 03:52 PM
Norman Foster has done quite a bit in America, especially Milwauke and Chicago, but since he was born and lives in the UK, most of his work is in Europe :(
For those of you who don't understand, I'm an architecture geek, so I have all this stuff memorized.
Wow, in terms of road height that just kicks the ass off the Sunshine Skyway between Tampa and Bradenton, which makes you feel like your car is just going to take off into space.
Well, Fosters Millenium Bridge has had many problems with it structurally (also involving wind) and that had to close for reinforcement.
The enviromentalists are stupid, but we got away with one thing like that. In colorado there is a tall freeway builtin into the sides of mountains, and the best thing is, for every tree cut down for paving another would be planted. And boy, is it a cool ride :cool:
whiteballz
10-07-2004, 03:58 PM
well see, the milenium bridge was a special thing...
heard about the roman army was told to break their marching accross bridges?
thats because the thumping in time sways the bridge.
on the milenium bridge its no different. just the pure amount of people on the bridge steping in time wobbles the bridge. it wouldnt have swayed so bad, but people kept widening their stance and steping in time. thus increasing the sway.
im a structure freak too
Matra et Alpine
10-07-2004, 05:46 PM
well see, the milenium bridge was a special thing...
heard about the roman army was told to break their marching accross bridges?
thats because the thumping in time sways the bridge.
on the milenium bridge its no different. just the pure amount of people on the bridge steping in time wobbles the bridge. it wouldnt have swayed so bad, but people kept widening their stance and steping in time. thus increasing the sway.
im a structure freak too
Guilty :)
Have you seen the UK TV program on the bridge ?
They did a full analysis and repeated it on a small section to show the reason why bridges sway as people walk on them and the effect it THEN has on a group of people walking. Basically they ALWAYS end up marching in time, so all the theories of the designers fall apart as they assume random distrbution. The program pointed out the Romans realised this 2000 years ago and we forgot :)
If you get a chance, catch the program - I'll try and find the name of it. There full-scale representation of the bridge dynamics showed it can sway with only a handful of people walkin in step !!
F1_Master
10-07-2004, 06:11 PM
What are they going to do if there's fog? I mean, someone better build some big ass bridge walls. Otherwise, someone in a semi can kiss life good-bye.
Niko_Fx
10-07-2004, 06:21 PM
Did anybody ever watch the program they did about the construction of the Kansai International Airport?
F1_Master
10-07-2004, 06:23 PM
The airport on water in Japan? I've been there for a vacation. It's nice. But kinda scared the shit out of me when I realised what the hell we were landing on. :eek:
whiteballz
10-07-2004, 06:26 PM
now why would that scare you?
your just landing on an island.
no biggie IMO.
Niko_Fx
10-07-2004, 06:30 PM
The island is sinking, about 2.7cm per year. That sucks.
However, I find fascinating the construction of that airport.
whiteballz
10-07-2004, 06:31 PM
ha!
didnt know it was sinking!
anyway, they will just shove some pipes under the airport, and shove concrete and dirt down them.
Blue Supra
10-07-2004, 07:37 PM
Iceland gets bigger every year because of its volcanic activity... I cant rememebr how much it grows, not a lot, but still in a million year or so we'll have a new continent!:D
Chinky_boi
10-07-2004, 07:38 PM
Once you get into a incident that makes your car fly off the side rail. You are DEAD!
Esperante
10-07-2004, 08:00 PM
the airport is based on a manmade island supported by a giant circular tube structure underneath it, the shape of the main terminal reflects only the tip of the tube in it's shape. (see my crappy diagram)
BTW Santiago Calatrava is also famous for innovative designs, recently he designed an addition to our art museum, nothing wrong with it, but when you walk across the bridge over Lincoln Memorial Drive, with every car passing under the bridge vibrates :p
http://people.msoe.edu/~reyer/mke/2001b.jpg
He's done an innumerable amount of work in Europe, mostly in Spain.
Chinky_boi
10-07-2004, 08:13 PM
the airport is based on a manmade island supported by a giant circular tube structure underneath it, the shape of the main terminal reflects only the tip of the tube in it's shape. (see my crappy diagram)
BTW Santiago Calatrava is also famous for innovative designs, recently he designed an addition to our art museum, nothing wrong with it, but when you walk across the bridge over Lincoln Memorial Drive, with every car passing under the bridge vibrates :p
He's done an innumerable amount of work in Europe, mostly in Spain.
That is a very nice drawing ;) Very artistic. :D
Blue Supra
10-07-2004, 08:48 PM
well it makes it simple so i understand it which is appreciated:)
Lagonda
10-09-2004, 09:37 AM
Looking on the web site , it IS a toll :(
But there is worse and I may now NOT want to go on it :)
The designer, Lord Norma Foster, is (IN)famous for his Millenium Bridge in London.
Looks spectacular and had to be closed and only recently had all the strengthening work done to stop it swaying so badly.
There's a clip of it ( but lo-Q :( ) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events2000/mbridge/mbridge_boetcher22nov.ram
Hope the French construction folks made him do his calculations twice this time !!!!!
The French would never make that bridge a no-toll bridge ;). Anyway I'll be taking that bridge a lot. It's about damn time they finished it.
Ciscoheat
10-09-2004, 10:09 AM
Kansai International was designed to sink, as over time the rock and sand base it was built on compacts.
The millenium bridge was strongly led by Foster who is an architect, not an engineer. He just came up with a showpeice design and told Arup to build it, and they of course didn't have the balls to question him or do a bit of research into resonance of suspencion bridges. It cost an additional £5 million to install the dampners to the bridge to absorb the sway and they wanted the client to pay for it!
Misho
10-09-2004, 12:41 PM
kansai airport/island was intended to sink for a while until full compaction of the underlying artificial ground layers is reached. the predicted levels have already been reached and the whole "structure" continues to sink beyond expectations.
mathematically calculating and modelling natural phonomenas (sp?) is extremely tricky.
anyways, its nice to see some folks actually share an ineterest in such topics. i am a civil engineer in case u didnt know, so i naturally have a strong interest in such issues.
Ciscoheat
10-09-2004, 01:10 PM
As I recall to get the material to make the Island the airport is built on, a small mountain was blasted and the rock and debris dumped within a huge coferdam area to build up the island. I thought that the buildings were founded hundreds of piles though.
Misho you are not alone, I am a structural engineer.
Esperante
10-09-2004, 01:43 PM
yes, that's exactly what they did, and that's also what happened with Battery Park City.
The WTC used a then new and innovative ground support system, nicknamed the Bathtup, a giant concrete paved out area several stories below the earth reaching Bedrock and containing the entire site. Structure was to fill up the space and then what appeared to be the ground at the WTC was actaully roofing. When all this earth was hauled out, they just dumped it into a confined space across the street, which, in 1970, was the Hudson River. The area of land now known as Battery Park City is actually dug up earth for the purpose of building the WTC. The problem was, after 9-11, it managed to puncture holes in the walls of the bathtub, and some of ht loose land in Battery Park City gave way allowing the Hudson River to reclaim some territory. They fixed it, can't remember how, but they did. here, take a look at BPC. It is the rectangular jut of land sticking out into the Hudson, the WTC is the giant gap of streets.
Let us not also forget that the Chicago fire, after stopping, all the debris was simply dumped into Lake Michigan, and everything East of Michigan Avenue is landfill. 200 years ago, Michigan Avenue was the coast.
Niko_Fx
12-13-2004, 08:57 PM
My GF is just telling me that the bridge is being inaugurated today, anybody has any info?
http://www.interbat.com/french/images/tribunes_img/viaduc_millau.jpg
SPHFerrari
12-13-2004, 09:01 PM
that looks like a ps
Blue Supra
12-13-2004, 09:14 PM
its for real man. look it up on google.
crisis
12-13-2004, 10:49 PM
Where exactly is that in France? I'll have to go down there, when it's finished.
How old are you now?
crisis
12-13-2004, 10:49 PM
Awesome.
Never happen in the UK, the environmentalists would get it stopped for ruining the views from mummies country house :(
Definately sounds like a need for a trip to south of France
I dont think you'll make it. :D
crisis
12-13-2004, 10:50 PM
Already finished, it will open in December.
Owned (me).