The Beipanjiang First Bridge

Solving a bottleneck between Yunnan Province and Guizhou Province, matching with surrounding exquisite scenery and deploying new freeze-monitoring technologies.

With a single 720m cable-stayed structure, the Beipanjiang First Bridge spans the deep V-shaped gorge where the elevation difference is around 700m. It is the first of its kind with main span length exceeding 500m in the gorge area. At the same time, the bridge is honoured as the highest bridge in the world with a vertical height of 565m from the bridge deck to the bottom of the gorge.

The Bridge site features steep terrain and deep valley under harsh climate condition, which brought unprecedented challenges to the design and construction.

The bridge therefore has an innovative bridge deck girder erection method – the first of its kind in the world. Instead of the conventional erection method with single components, the entire steel truss girder segment was erected with the aid of under bridge rails for segment launching and cantilever construction.

The bridge is also the first example in China of stay cable freeze monitoring with an image identification alarm as part of its health monitoring system. This practice can now be extensively applied to other cable supported bridges in mountainous areas affected by freezing weather.