Among the four types of bridges,arch bridge stands out due to its good mechan-ical performance.To be specific,its arch ring is generally under small eccentriccompression,so it is free of fatigue problems.Arch bridge is also characterized bylong durability,high stiffness and strong cost competitiveness.Before the Indus-trial Revolution,arch bridge was the best choice for in-land rivers serving navigationpurposes aroundthe world.At thattime,arch bridges were constructed upon brackets,which posed high risks in flood control.To this end,Josef Milan,an Austrian engi-neer,introduced the steel-reinforced concrete (SRC)arch bridge with a stiff skeleton
in 1898.Chinese engineers made further improvement on SRC arch bridges by usingconcrete-filled steel tubular(CFST)arch as the stiff skeleton and ingeniously devel-oped load adjustment techniques,which further led to reduced construction costand risks of concrete arch bridges.Moreover,the construction of arch ring by abracket-free technique is another symbol signifying the achievement of modern archbridges.
Driven by the large-scale construction of highways and railways in China andsupported by the bracket-free techniques for arch ring construction,concrete-filledsteel tubular(CFST)arch bridges and steel-reinforced concrete (SRC)arch bridgeswith a stiff skeleton have developed very rapidly.The first CFST arch bridge,theWangcang East River Bridge with a span of 115m,was built in 1990.By 2018,morethan 460 CFST arch bridges and SRC arch bridges have been built.The Hejiang FirstYangtze River Bridge with a span of 530 m has been in operation for 6 years.ThePingnan Third Bridge with a span of 575m is expected to open to traffic in 2020.It is a rare phenomenon in the history of bridge development that the number andspan length of CFST and SRC arch bridges increased so quickly over the past threedecades in China.
Technology innovations proposed by Chinese engineers have promoted the fastand healthy development of arch bridges.The cable-stayed fastening and hangingassembly technology developed in 1968 and the arch ring rotation technologyproposed in 1977 realized the construction of CFST arch bridges and SRC archbridges without brackets.Furthermore,in-depth research has also been conductedon the design therioes,construction techniques,materials and equipment for thesetwo types of arch bridges spanning over 500 m,thereby resulting in better quality,lower construction cost and risks.
The author of this book,Zheng Jielian,an academician of the Chinese Academyof Engineering,has been a witness,participant,and innovator of arch bridges overthe past 30 years.In this book,he summarized the experiences and directions ofCFST arch bridges and SRC arch bridges.It can be served as a good reference forbridge engineers,researchers and students majoring in bridge engineering.I believethat the publication of this book will contribute to the further development of archbridges in China.
Shanghai,ChinaOctober 2019
Xiang Haifan