In the planets most fastest growing nation, China is going under a transformation unlike

any other in history. In just a decade, it has created a web of roads and bridges, second only to
the United States. But unlike the US, China has two of the longest rivers. Rivers that divide the
country, and disrupt travel by land. The creation of bridges is vital to this exploding economy,
but Chinas rivers are a bridge builders nightmare. The Sutong Bridge was one of the World
Outstanding Engineering Construction Accomplishment in the last 15 years. It crosses Yangtze
River in the lower reaches and one of the busiest national waterways. It is located in the
southeast of Jiangsu Province, China, which is in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The
Sutong Bridge crosses the Yangtze River approximately 100 km upstream from Shanghai, China,
connecting the cities Suzhou and Nantong located on the southern and northern banks
respectively. The bridge substructure was designed and constructed with the emphasis on
sustainable development or environmental protection in the mother river of China, Yangtze
River. This aim was achieved through selecting group pile foundation instead of caisson to
alleviate the impact on the river flow, installing various scour protection to minimize the erosion
in the river bed, and adopting partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (PHP) system for clay mud
treatment to reduce the disposal of bored pile construction.

The visionary project was motivated by the need for a highway route crossing the
Yangtze River and linking Suzhou and Nantong at the opposite banks. The Sutong Bridge was
expected to ease navigation problems caused by ferries in the Yangtze estuary and promote
economic growth in the Yangtze River Delta. Before construction of the bridge began there were
four traffic carrying ferries across the river, with each journey taking one hour. With the level of
traffic crossing the river increasing annually, a stage was reached whereby the ferries were no
longer able to withstand the traffic levels and it was decided that the construction of a bridge was
required in order to handle the traffic levels.

The Jiangsu Provincial Sutong Bridge Construction Commanding Department is the

owner of the bridge, who will act as general supervisor during construction of the bridge. The
bridge is designed by a consortium composed of the China Highway Planning and Design

Institute (HPDI), the Jiangsu Provincial Communication Planning and Design Institute (JSPCD),
and the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tongji University. Construction work is
performed by contractors which include the 2nd Navigational Engineering Bureau of China
Communications Construction Company Ltd, the 2nd Highway Engineering Bureau of China
Communications Construction Company Ltd, China Railway Shanhaiguan Bridge Group Co.,
Ltd, and Jiangyin Fasten Cable Co., Ltd. As technical consultants, the China Railway Major
Bridge Design Institute, COWI from Denmark, Southwest University, Maunsell Hongkong, and
Nippon Steel have provided technical consultation service during the construction period.
COWI's scope of services includes design assistance to the Chinese designer of the bridge and a
review of the detailed design. Construction began in June 2003 and bridge was linked up in June
2007. The bridge was opened to traffic on May 25, 2008 and was officially opened on the 30th
June, 2008. The whole construction process lasted for about five years, almost one year ahead of
schedule. The total cost of the project is about 1.2 billion US dollars including 23 km of
approach roads, 6 km of approach bridges, and the main bridge itself.

First and foremost the ability of a bridge to fulfill its function is above all, the most
important aspect for consideration when designing a bridge. It needs to reveal Proceedings of
Bridge Engineering 2 Conference 2009 April 2009, University of Bath, Bath, UK to the user its
structure in a clear form in order to give the user an air of stability when crossing the
structure.On the approach to the bridge, the gentle curve from the Northern Approach provides
the users the opportunity to view the structure that they are about to cross. This is advantageous
over straight lined bridges as it provides users the unique opportunity to see how the structure of
the piers and then subsequent cable-stay, holds up the decking, thus providing them with a
certain level of comfort. Across the large main span of the cable stay portion of the bridge, the
large main span of the deck, compared with the relatively shallow depth helps to emphasis the
role that the strength of the cables play in supporting the deck. It can be extremely difficult when
designing a bridge thats make-up is to be split into different portions, to make sure that all the
proportions flow elegantly between one of the bridge sections to another. The Sutong Bridge has
been cleverly designed as such in order to satisfy the contrasts in proportion needed between
decking and piers in order to make the bridge feel structurally stable as well as giving the deck

the slender appearance needed to highlight the world being done by the cables in the main
section. The large height of the two A-frame piers that hold the cables superbly complements the
main span between each tower, the longest span in the world for a cable-stay bridge, with their
large height justifying long central span. During the planning phase a lot of emphasis was placed
on piersspacing and as well as the proportions of the deck and columns and it was decided to
give the piers an even spacing of 75m in order to give balanced cantilever articulation and a
sense of symmetry.

What is new with Sutong bridge are the sutong bridge have a span of 1,088 meters (3,570
ft), it was the cable-stayed bridge with the longest main span in the world in 2008-2012. Its two
side spans are 300 meters (980 ft) each, and there are also four small cable spans. The width of
the Yangtze River at the bridge site is approximately 6 km and the total length of the Sutong
Bridge is approximately 8 km. The site conditions for the main towers are extremely challenging.
The northern pylon, Pier 4, is located in about 30 m water depth and the southern pylon, Pier 5,
is located in about 16 m water depth. The river is subject to both high fresh water runoff volumes
and tidal effects, creating currents exceeding 3.0 m/sec in the extreme conditions. Maximum
potential wave heights at the site exceed 3.5 m. The river is alluvial and subject to rapid changes
in bottom contours due to high erosion and deposition rates. The river bed at the northern pylon
consists of sandy materials and at the southern pylon, the bed material is mainly silty loam and
silty clay. These site characteristics create a condition where the river bottom will immediately
respond to the introduction of any structure such as a bridge pier or pylon. Hydraulic model
studies for the bridge, performed by the Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, predicted up to 29
m of scour (100 year return period) at the south pylon with a caisson foundation and up to 24 m
of scour (300 year return period) at the same location for a large diameter pile foundation
solution (Jensen,2004).Bed rock is located at approximately 240 m below the river bottom. The
soils in the upper 240 m consists of layered sediments of fine sand , course sand, silty sands and
gravels with occasional layers of clay. Two towers of the bridge are 306 meters (1,004 ft) high
and thus the second tallest in the world. The total bridge length is 8,206 meters (26,923 ft).The
tower is an inverted Y-shaped reinforced concrete structure with one connecting girder between

tower legs. The bridge deck is a steel box girder with internal transverse and longitudinal
diaphragms and fairing noses at both sides of the bridge deck.
The conceptual scour design for the two main piers was performed by COWI A/S,
Denmark. The detail design was performed by Jiangsu Provincial Communication, Planning &
Design Institute. Hydraulic studies and surveys were performed by Nanjing Hydraulic Research
Institute. The hydraulic design parameters for the scour protection were a combination of the
current, water level and in some cases, waves acting at the same time. The pile group width
perpendicular to the river current is 48 m and the length is about 112 m. The hydraulic model
tests showed the extension of the scour around the structure to be essentially equal in all four
directions, approximately 60m. The ideas presented for scour protection were developed based
on COWIs experience in combination with their understanding of the very difficult conditions in
Yangtze River with deep water, high currents and high sediment transport. The major problem
associated with the scour protection was its construction. The scour protection in itself had to be
made in a way that it was not too difficult to construct, and also, that it would prevent scour
during construction. It was assessed that if the bridge piers were made without prior scour
protection, the development of scour will be so rapid that it would be difficult to construct the
scour protection later on and the bed level would have eroded to such a low level, that the
advantage of the existing bed levels would have disappeared. Therefore the scour protection was
designed in such a way that it would allow for the construction of the piles through the central
part of a temporary scour protection and then later on the final scour protection could be
introduced.

Based on these considerations, the designers refrained from the use of large prefabricated
mattresses, gabions or large bamboo/willow mattresses. Such solutions could be used but would
be difficult to handle and place in the very high currents prevailing at the site. The principal ideas
for the scour protection of the pylons of the Sutong Bridge included the use of three distinct
areas or zones that is The Central Area or Inner Zone, Outer Area and The Falling Apron Area.
The foundation design and construction team on the Sutong Bridge have succeeded in
constructing foundations for a world record setting bridge at a very challenging site on the lower
Yangtze River. The design team, working in conjunction with their construction counterparts,

developed innovative holistic solutions that addressed the very rigorous requirements of the
structural design while remaining fully constructible under extremely difficult conditions. With
the Sutong Bridge coming in at a cost of $726million, the local authorities made sure that all
aspects of the design and construction were considered to build a landmark bridge that would set
a precedent for future cable-stay constructions. Creating the first cable stay bridge in history to
span greater than 1000m, they have managed to achieve their desire for a bridge that will hold
down its place in time for breaking such a historically important milestone whilst cementing the
regions reputation as a fast growing industrial region. With this in mind, finding improvements
that could be made to such a detailed and well thought out structure are few and far between.

One of the most challenges involve in constructing the tower is to control the space of
geometrical position, alignment and precision of the tower since the height of the bridge is big
and the lower and middle tower component is tilt. Besides that, the accumulation of the root
tower moment and the additional stress caused by the self-loading of the tower column and the
horizontal component of the construction load also will affect the liner control of the cable tower.
Another challenge that involved while constructing the tower is concrete segmental control.
Since the construction of the Sutong Bridge is using the tracing prism method in measurement
work, then the skill person and right method used need to put into consideration to ensure the
construction section segment determined is accurate. Tracking prisms were used for construction
control of pylon verticality during pylon construction so as to compensate such ambient factors
as wind and temperature influence on survey measurements.

The problem being solved by setting out concept of the box girder, the box girder soffit
was always horizontal in the Engineers design thus the cross section of the box was not
symmetric about its centerline. The depth of two webs varied with respect to changes in superelevation. The alternative setting out concept employed a constant depth section by allowing
rotation in the box axis. This arrangement would simplify the mould design and casting operation
in the production. Standardization of structural elements in the alternative proposal, many
typical structural elements, such as, shear keys, blisters for cantilever tendons and diaphragm

segments at end spans, were re-detailed and standardized in order to facilitate constructability.
The geometry control during erection was monitored at various stages. The theoretical profile of
the deck, taking into consideration of the camber and stage effects, was compared with the
observed results. Initially, some discrepancies were observed. After a thorough investigation, it
was discovered that the problem was due to improper application of the temporary stressing
system. Great improvement on the geometry accuracy was achieved for the remaining works.

After completion, Sutong Bridge created four new world records for cable-stayed bridges
includes the longest of 1088m span, the highest main bridge tower with 306m height, the deepest
of two foundation piers of the main bridge and the longest stay of the main bridge at 580m. The
Sutong Bridge is 200m longer than that of Tatara Bridge in Japan and its north and south pylon
are the essence of Sutong Bridge, as all load needs to be first transferred to pylon leg, then to the
foundation. This means high accuracy of pylon construction. Besides, the stay has a dead weight
of 59 tons and service life of 50 years. It is superior to similar products from abroad from quality
and service life point of view. The bridge also received the 2010 Outstanding Civil Engineering
Achievement award (OCEA) from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in its annual
Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) awards program. In the words of the judges, The
Sutong Bridge pushed the technological frontier of long-span bridge construction.

The construction of the Sutong bridge comes with a great benefit to China. In
constructing a bridge it has reduced the amount of time taken to cross the river from one hour,
down to five minutes by car. The bridge consists of four different sections of varying lengths.
Central to these sections is the main cable-stay section which is seen as the showcase piece to the
Sutong Bridge. The completion of the bridge shortens the commute between Shanghai and
Nantong, previously a four-hour ferry ride, to about an hour. It brings Nantong one step closer to
becoming an important part of the Yangtze River Delta economic zone, and has further attracted
foreign investors into the city. The bridge is also pivotal in the development of poorer northern
Jiangsu regions.

In conclusion, the design and construction of the Sutong Bridge is a testament to both
modern Architectural and Engineering capabilities. Being the first cable-stay bridge to span
greater than 1000m has set a blueprint for future cable-stay structures such as the Stonecutters
Bridge in Hong Kong for whom, without the success of the Sutong Bridge, may not received the
same confidence and backing. The ability to produce an aesthetically pleasing bridge that blends
into an environment more associated with industrial prowess than natural beauty is an
achievement that only goes to heighten the success of the Sutong Bridge. According to Dr. Robin
Sham, Director of AECOM who has been involved in this Sutong Bridge projects, wind and
construction effects are highly important aspects when designing the long-span bridges since it
exist as partial structures during the erection. That is why the special attention needs to be paid to
the construction method and sequence in the design phase of the project. In order to construct
this long-span bridge, it needs a special skills and a genuine passion to complete the work. The
successful construction of Sutong Bridge plays an important role in promoting China to lead the
bridge engineering technologies as well as provides valuable experience for similar bridge
project in the future. Overall, the Sutong Bridge has to be concluded as a complete success.