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Korean innovation
Faced with the challenge of refurbishing the old modular expansion joints of a major suspension bridge, our team in South Korea developed a new method that involves replacing only the surface beams – minimising impacts on the structure and on traffic.
Construction of the Yeongjong Bridge in South Korea was completed in the year 2000 to provide road and railway access to the new Incheon International Airport – the main airport serving the capital city, Seoul – which is located on an island off the country’s west coast. mageba was honoured to be entrusted with the job of supplying the 8-gap TENSA®MODULAR expansion joints used in the construction of this spectacular two-level suspension bridge. Eight years later, we took it as confirmation of the expansion joints’ very good performance to date when we were selected to supply joints of the same type (this time with up to 24 gaps each!) when the equally impressive Incheon Grand Bridge was constructed to provide a second highway connection to the airport island.
After more than two decades of service, under extremely heavy traffic and subjected to the harsh marine environment, the driving surface of the Yeongjong Bridge’s expansion joints had deteriorated from steel corrosion and mageba was contacted to advise how to address the issue. Our team in South Korea, whose office is just south of the capital and equally close to Incheon, assessed the condition of the joints and came up with an approach that would minimise effort, expense and the use of materials and resources – and perhaps most importantly, also minimise the impact on traffic while the work was carried out.
Since the expansion joints were still in good condition apart from the corrosion of the driving surface, our dedicated engineers developed an innovative solution, illustrated by the photographs, that essentially involves replacing the surface beams only. This approach is less invasive than the ”box-in-box” method, developed by mageba years before, which involves also replacing the support bars beneath the surface beams. While it is more invasive than the Quick-Ex method, that option only exists where an expansion joint has originally been fabricated and installed with mageba’s Quick-Ex design, which had not yet been invented at the time of the Yeongjong Bridge’s construction.
The range of solutions developed by mageba to provide options for modular joint renewal demonstrates the innovativeness and engineering capabilities of our teams all around the world – if there is a way of minimising the cost, effort or side effects of expansion joint replacement work on your structure, we will find it for you!
Bridge engineer: Yooshin Engineering Corporation & CHODAI CO.,LTD.
Owner: The New Airport Hiway Co., Ltd.
