Main span of Guangxi's longest sea bridge completed

Work on the main span of the Longmen Bridge, the longest cross-sea bridge in Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, was wrapped up on Jan 8 after more than 1,000 days of construction.

It lays a solid foundation for the bridge to open to traffic in schedule this year.

The project, 7.6 kilometers long, with the largest bridge's span of 6,597 meters, involves the installation of 96 steel box girders weighing more than 19,000 metric tons in total.

With a bridge deck height of 44.6 meters above the water, the suspension bridge can enable 20,000-ton cruise ships to pass under it.

The large-span suspension bridge is the largest and most complicated cross-sea transportation project in the autonomous region due to adverse factors such as significant structural displacement, poor wind, and seismic performance.

The technical team innovated the steel box girders to resist wind at a speed of 140 meters per second at most, exceeding the super typhoon intensity of level 17 or above, far beyond the industry's standard of 80 meters per second.

Upon its completion, Longmen Bridge will break the bottleneck of the coastal highway in Guangxi and shorten the travel time between Fangchenggang and Qinzhou Port from the original 1.5 hours to less than 30 minutes.

It will effectively promote the Beihai-Qingzhou-Fangchenggang integration and high-quality growth of the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone and assist in constructing new land-sea routes in China's western region.