WeBuild finishes building Romania’s Suspension Bridge.
A large team of more than 1,350 people and 100 suppliers worked together to build the Braila Bridge in Romania. The bridge is 1,975 meters long, with a deck span of 1,120 meters. It is 31.7 meters wide and has two tall towers. The bridge has four lanes for cars, as well as emergency lanes and paths for bicycles.
To support the bridge, there are two strong cables made of over 18,000 interwoven steel wires, weighing a total of 6,775 tons. The foundation of the bridge consists of piles that are 1.8 meters in diameter and go as deep as 45 meters.
The deck of the bridge is made up of 86 sections, each weighing about 260 tons. These sections were produced at a nearby factory by an Italian company called Fincantieri. In total, they used 21,000 tons of steel and around 12,000 cubic meters of reinforced concrete. The deck is suspended about 40 meters above the water level to allow medium-sized ships to pass underneath.
The Braila Bridge has been designed to withstand strong winds of up to 270 kilometers per hour and powerful seismic activity. It has been tested in collaboration with a Japanese company that built the second-longest suspension bridge in the world.
With its length of 1,975 meters, the Braila Bridge is the second longest suspension bridge in mainland Europe, following the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark. Although it is technically longer than the Hardanger Bridge in Denmark, its main span is shorter. In comparison to other European suspension bridges, it is not as long as the Humber Bridge in the United Kingdom. Turkey has three suspension bridges that are longer, including the record-breaking 1915 Çanakkale Bridge.
WeBuild, the company behind the Braila Bridge, has plans to construct an even longer bridge across the Strait of Messina. If approved, the Messina Bridge would have a length of 5,000 meters and the world’s longest single span at 3,300 meters. WeBuild believes the Braila Bridge is a smaller version of the potential Messina bridge and has expressed confidence in constructing it within six years.
The Braila Bridge was commissioned by a Romanian state company and funded by the European Union. It is expected to contribute to the economic growth of southeast Romania and support the development of the European Union’s Trans-European Transport Networks.
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