Kochertal Bridge

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Coordinates: 49 ° 10 ′ 38 ″  N , 9 ° 47 ′ 6 ″  E

A6 E50 Kochertal Bridge
  Kochertal Bridge
The Kochertal Bridge seen from the south
Convicted Federal motorway 6
Crossing of Kochertal
Subjugated Road 1045
place Geislingen am Kocher
construction Prestressed concrete - box girder bridge
overall length 1128 m
width 31 m
Longest span 138 m
Construction height 6.5 m
height 185 m
building-costs 70.2 million DM
(today's purchasing power approx. 81.4 million EUR)
start of building 1976
completion 1979
location
Kochertal Bridge (Baden-Württemberg)
Kochertal Bridge

The Kochertalbrücke near Geislingen am Kocher , a district of the Braunsbach community , is the highest valley bridge in Germany with a maximum height of 185 m above ground . Its 178 m high bridge piers were the highest in the world until they were replaced by the Viaduc de Millau in 2004 . The Puente San Marcos in Mexico with the 208 m high P4 has had the highest pillar of all girder bridges since 2013 .

Over the bridge on the route between Heilbronn and Nuremberg, the federal motorway 6 crosses the Kochertal in four lanes not far from Geislingen .

Bridge construction

The structure spans the valley over a length of 1128 m. From a static point of view, the prestressed concrete superstructure is a nine-span continuous beam in the longitudinal direction . The two outer fields each have a span of 81 m, the seven inner fields of 138 m. In cross-section, the superstructure is a single-cell, right-angled box girder, 8.6 m wide and with a constant height of 6.5 m. The carriageway slab is 31 m wide and at least 26 cm thick everywhere, the web of the hollow box (its side wall) is 45 cm thick. Every 7.67 m, inclined compression struts support the 11.2 m cantilevered deck slab on both sides.

The central pillars three to six are clamped into the superstructure and act with it as a frame-like structure . Together with pillars two and seven, which are equipped with fixed point tilting bearings , they stabilize the structure in the longitudinal direction and form the fixed point. The superstructure can be moved lengthways on the abutments and pillars one and eight.

The eight pillars are between 40 m and 178 m high. Its hollow cross-section is conical, single-celled and rectangular on all sides, it is 8.6 m wide and 5.0 m thick at the top and widens down to the base to a maximum of 15.0 m × 9.5 m. The wall has a thickness of at least 50 cm, in the foot and head areas it reaches 90 cm. The slope pillars two and seven are founded with 45 m deep shafts in the slide slopes .

The bridge superstructure was constructed using the cantilever construction of the box girder cross-section. The cantilevered carriageway slab parts were subsequently concreted with a trailer carriage. A consortium of companies Ed. Züblin AG, DYWIDAG and Wayss & Freytag AG built the bridge from 1976 to 1979 with 40% reduced costs based on a special draft proposal from Wayss & Freytag with the advice of Fritz Leonhardt .

and display information about the image
Kochertal Bridge under construction in 1979

  • State of construction August 1978

  • western pillars

  • Kochertal Bridge from the northwest

Open to traffic

The bridge, part of the motorway section between the Kupferzell and Aurach junctions, was opened to traffic on December 18, 1979.

Repair

Lifting a transition structure

Since July 2013, the bridge has been renovated and strengthened for a total construction cost of 22.4 million euros (adjusted for inflation today corresponds to 23.6 million euros) in order to enable use with three lanes in each direction in the future. In the case of the hollow box, the bridges and the base plate were reinforced above the bridge piers and additional tensioning cables were installed. On the bridge, the bridge caps, the sealing underneath, the climb-over protection and the protective devices were renewed and the entire bridge drainage was replaced. At the ends of the bridge, the transition structures were replaced by noise-reducing structures. The worn pot bearings on the pier heads or abutments made an exchange necessary. The complete renovation was completed by the end of 2015.

The repair of the Kochertal Bridge was awarded the undoped German Bridge Construction Prize 2016 in the category "Road and Railway Bridges ", because according to the jury's verdict, "thanks to this innovative and outstanding engineering achievement, the usability of the existing building structure could be sustainably extended".

museum

The bridge museum was set up in Geislingen for the bridge and its construction history. It is open by appointment and offers the visitor interesting information about the construction of the bridge.

useful information

In 1990, full grating was installed on both sides of the bridge for a total of 485,000.00 euros. Up to 1990 the bridge with 48 suicides since its construction was an extreme, not comparable special case with regard to the number of deaths compared to the other bridges in Baden-Württemberg.

literature

  • A. Linse: Kochertalbrücke - drafts of a large bridge. In: Bauingenieur, born 1978, pp. 453–463.
  • Simone Meyder, Michael Hascher: Higher than the Ulm Minster. The Kochertal bridge near Geislingen. In: Preservation of monuments in Baden-Württemberg , 39th year 2010, issue 3, p. 184 f. ( online ; PDF; 6.8 MB)
  • Association of German Engineers Württemberg (ed.): The Kochertal Bridge. Germany's highest bridge, a cultural monument for Europe. Molino Verlag, Schwäbisch Hall 2019. ISBN 978-3-9820231-2-0 .

Web links

Commons : Kochertalbrücke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Leonhardt: Bridges / Bridges . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-421-02590-8 , p. 302.
  2. ↑ A 6 Heilbronn - Nuremberg. Retrieved November 21, 2019 .
  3. ^ Kochertalbrücke in the course of the A 6 near Geislingen, Baden-Württemberg ( Memento from April 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Small request from the Abg. Michael Theurer FDP / DVP. Retrieved April 26, 2020 .