When it occurs to us to look for the record of something “greatest in the world”, we already do it with some suspicion, we admit it, because this country is crazy. It is not only that China usually houses mega-constructions, speaking of those that human beings have built in a conventional way, but also little by little it is taking over the records of the printing companies, and in this case we are talking about longest 3D printed bridge in the world.
It is not the only 3D printed bridge, but the Shanghai at the moment it is the longest with almost 30 meters in length. It is a pedestrian bridge over a canal in the Baoshan district and with the naked eye it would pass through any bridge, in fact one of its peculiarities is that the aesthetics are totally from another era.
A bridge with a built-in monitoring system
We said that it is not the first 3D printed bridge that existed because in Amsterdam they already presented one, although in steel. Of course, there was baggage of this type of construction in China, remembering that neither more nor less replicated the Yungang Grottoes in a transportable version using this technology.
As explained in New China TV (a Chinese outlet of the Xinhua news agency, fully or partially funded by the country’s government), the Baoshan district bridge measures 26.21 meters long and 3.6 meters wide. It is designed to support the weight of up to 600 pedestrians.
–
–
The bridge was designed by the Zoina Land Joint Research Center for Digital Architecture (JCDA) at Tsinghua University and built by Shanghai Wisdom Bay Investment Management Company. It consists of 44 units of printed cement, with dimensions of 0.91 x 0.91 x 1.52 meters each.
–
–
–
According to the JCDA team of architects, the construction cost two-thirds of what it would have been the cost of a standard construction. In this case, as we see in the video, the bridge was created with two robotic arms who were creating the structure layer by layer, taking a total of 450 hours, and the technology created by Professor Xu Weiguo himself (from said university).
The 3D printed bridge was built on a single arch structure to support the load and the spacing between the arch fingers is 14.4 meters. Further, integrates a system that monitors the effort and stress suffered the structure, so that its conditions can be consulted in real time.
The impression materials used were composed of concrete with polyethylene fiber and various additives. As published in Tsinghua University, the resistance of the material to compression is 65 mpa and to bending up to 15 mpa.
As we mentioned before, the aspect is not that it is precisely modernist and, as one might think, there is a reason for it. As explained in CNN, the team wanted pay tribute to Zhaozhou Bridge, built between 589 and 618 in Hebei province (North China) and the oldest foot bridge in China. We will see if its modern version and its printed construction is also capable of withstanding so many centuries.
Image | Tsinghua University
–
