All the steel work for the bridge was produced at Jebel Ali.
Causeway gets steel bridge
01 October 2002
A huge structural steel bridge has been lifted into position for the Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa Causeway in Bahrain.
The 404-m, 2,000-tonne arch was manoeuvred into position between the support piers using tugs and lifted into its final position some 15.4 m above sea level using nine 500-tonne-capacity strand jacks.
Construction workers then began welding it into place, with the work expected to continue till early October.
"The steel bridge installation is one of the biggest challenges to the causeway project," said works ministry undersecretary Nayef Omar Al Kalali. "Once this is in place, the remainder of the job should run smoothly."
Once completed, the Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Causeway Bridge will connect the peninsular of Hidd with the mainland of Bahrain at the Mina Sulman port in Manama. The bridge will carry dual two-lane carriageways with full width emergency lanes on both carriageways. However, these will eventually function as dual three-lane carriageways.
The bridge is 404 m long between abutments with intermediate supports located within the sea. Steel beams on the approach at both the Hidd and Juffair abutments were completed earlier this summer.
The main navigation span is 121 m long will have a minimum vertical clearance between soffit of deck and mean high water spring tide level of 15.4 m and a horizontal clearance of 115 m. The main span is a bowstring arch structure with two pairs of arches - one on either side of the deck, each supporting a longitudinal tie member suspended by hangers. Between these tie members spans transverse steel girders.
A reinforced concrete top slab will form the deck and this will act compositely with the structural steelwork. The approaches on either side of navigation span consists of three equal spans either side with span lengths of 46 m. These approaches are independent of the mainspan and are formed using steel plate girders spanning longitudinally into a transverse steel crossbeam forming a diaphragm at the supports.
The new bridge will be the major overwater connection of the 6.4-km causeway.
All of the structural steelwork has been fabricated in Cleveland Bridge & Engineering's works in the Jebel Ali Free Zone where they were pre-assembled prior to being shipped piece by piece and erected in Bahrain. The navigation span together with the temporary support steelwork weighs in excess of 3,500 tonne and is 121 m long, 54 m wide with an arch height of 26 m.
"The steel fabrication work of the bridge that we have done is about one third of the total BD14.5 million ($38.5 million) project cost," said managing director Michael Mack of Cleveland Bridge.
Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Middle East is a Dubai-based company which designs, fabricates and erects structural steelwork for industrial, oil, gas and petrochemical complexes, power stations, desalination plants, commercial buildings, aircraft hangars, fired heaters and cranes.
The Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa Causeway is expected open in November next year. The main contractor is a joint venture between the Haji Hassan Group and Six Construct. The project consultant is Hyder Consulting.
