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Australia

New England Highway

Project description

The New England Highway in New South Wales, the inland alternative to the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane, crosses challenging terrain in places, especially at Bolivia Hill, where the highway traverses a particularly adverse landscape.

A newly constructed bridge enables the traffic to pass through this area much more safely and quickly. The cast in-situ concrete box girder bridge, constructed by the balanced cantilever method with a superstructure depth of up to 8.5 m, has a main span of 150 m and outer spans of 80 m and 86 m respectively.

Added to these impressive dimensions and the lack of symmetry is the bridge’s enormous gradient of 8.2%, which is an exceptionally high slope for a major road bridge.

mageba scope

In order to support the superstructure at its ends, where its design requires movements to be accommodated, 4 RESTON-SPHERICAL bearings were designed and installed at the same gradient as the bridge’s surface.

This type of structural bridge bearing was selected for use as it can accommodate very high rotations and offers high strength and durability. The installed structural bearings were designed to carry a normal load of 11,500 kN and to accommodate either unidirectional or multidirectional movements.

The spherical bearings were equipped with anchor plates for easier future repair or replacement, and with an inclined transition plate beneath each bearing to enable it to be installed on a horizontal substructure.

Before installation, the bridge bearings were tested at mageba Australia’s in-house nationally-certified testing laboratory in Sydney.

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Fabrication and assembly of the structural bearings was carried out in mageba’s Shanghai factory

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Testing of a structural bearing, at mageba Australia’s in-house NATA-accredited (ILAC MRA) laboratory in Sydney

Key Data

Products:

RESTON-SPHERICAL bearings

Installed:

2020

Location:

Bolivia Hill

Type:

Concrete box girder bridge

Length:

150 m

Owner:

Transport for New South Wales

Contractor:

Georgiou-SRG JV

Designer:

ARCADIS