Lahn valley bridge Limburg
Coordinates: 50 ° 23 ′ 19 ″ N , 8 ° 4 ′ 46 ″ E
 Lahntal Bridge Limburg (2016)
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| Official name | Lahn valley bridge Limburg | |
| Convicted | Federal motorway 3 | |
| Crossing of | Lahn | |
| place | Limburg | |
| construction | Prestressed concrete - box girder bridge | |
| overall length | 450 m | |
| width | 2 × 21.75 m | |
| Longest span | 90 m | |
| Construction height | 2.5 m to 5.5 m | |
| height | 62 m | |
| vehicles per day | 104,000 | |
| building-costs | € 40.6 million (net) | |
| start of building | 2013 | |
| completion | 2016 | |
| opening | 2016 | |
| location | ||
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The Lahntalbrücke Limburg is a 450 meter long bridge on the Autobahn 3 in Limburg . The girder bridge, which was built in 2013 and completed in 2016, is located east of the Limburg city center and spans the Lahn , as well as the parallel Lahntalbahn and the L3020 (Eschhöfer Weg) road at a maximum height of around 62 meters above ground.
The first Lahntal bridge on the motorway near Limburg was built from 1937 to 1939 as a stone arch bridge . After being destroyed by a demolition squad of the German Wehrmacht in 1945, it was put back into operation from 1949 to 1962 with makeshift structures. A prestressed concrete beam bridge was built between 1960 and 1964 . This was demolished in 2017 after the completion of the new building.
Since 2001, the Lahntalbrücke of the high-speed route Cologne – Rhine / Main has been running almost parallel to the Lahn river for a few hundred meters .
Bridge 1939 to 1945
The structure was created as a natural stone arch bridge based on a design by the Frankfurt Supreme Construction Management for Motorways and was one of the most complex bridge structures on the Reichsautobahn . Paul Bonatz worked with him in the preliminary design phase , who then further developed the design to a large extent ready for implementation. The construction consisted of natural stone vaults on natural stone-clad pillars in rammed concrete. The bridge was built from July 1937 and opened to traffic on September 23, 1939 with the Limburg-Nord motorway section to the Wiesbaden junction at the time on route 21.
The 513.54 meter long and maximum 60 meter high structure had thirteen arches with wooden falsework with clear widths of 29.48 meters and pillar spacing of 34.0 meters. The external appearance, with its natural stone cladding, resembled the later built Elstertal bridge on the Vogtland motorway, "light silver to gray and greenish, irregularly scaled like a trout's body". The masonry consisted of Lahn porphyry , trachyte , phonolite , limestone and granite. The pillars tapered upwards from 6.0 to 4.5 meters, which increased the monumental effect. With a width of 19 meters, it corresponded to the standard cross-section of the Reichsautobahn of 7.5 meters per lane plus 4 meters of central, but without hard shoulder. The arches were raised with an elliptical shape.
The choice of materials and arch construction corresponded on the one hand with the then unplastered Limburg Cathedral , which was about 900 meters away, and on the other hand with the old Lahn bridge from the 14th century, over which the Via Publica led from Cologne to Frankfurt. Considerable effort was made in selecting the material. Among other things, the stones of the Limburg Cathedral, the Abbey Church of Marienstatt and older railway bridges in the Westerwald were examined in order to find out their place of origin and to use stones from there. In Goldhausen in the Westerwald, a disused quarry was reopened in order to obtain stones from there that had been used for the central pillars of Limburg Cathedral. Other sources for the natural stone cladding were quarries in Selters (Westerwald) , Wölferlingen and Weidenhahn . Since the Westerwald stone factories were not efficient enough, almost half of the stone had to be sourced from the Eifel and the Fichtel Mountains . An irregular layered masonry was used. The bases of the pillars were clad with Lahn marble , not for design reasons, but because of its resilience. A total of around 21,500 cubic meters of stone were used.
Construction companies were primarily Grün & Bilfinger and Dyckerhoff & Widmann . Up to a thousand people were employed on the construction site at the same time.
Because of its landscape and location-related design, the bridge was considered an architectural monument and a prime example of successful collaboration between architect and engineer. The dimensions of the pillars, however, did not match the Limburg Cathedral in the background or the landscape, even if the beauty of the masonry softened the effect of the mass.
On the night of March 26, 1945, the Wehrmacht blew an arc in front of the American troops advancing from the direction of Montabaur . That night and on the following days six more arches fell. The resulting damming of the Lahn largely flooded the village of Mühlen and interrupted the Lahn Valley Railway. From a military point of view, the demolition was useless, the next day the Americans occupied Limburg and advanced further into the area south of the Lahn without major resistance. About a week after the destruction by the Wehrmacht, American pioneers blew a drain into the rubble dam to remove the dammed water. This demolition had a long-term effect: a water vortex formed as a result washed under the embankment of the Lahn Valley Railway, which ran along the bank. In 1946 the dam collapsed under an empty locomotive. A railway employee was killed.
Bridge 1949 to 1962
From 1948 to 1949 a temporary bridge was installed over the destroyed bridge section. It had to close a 218 meter wide gap and was a parallel framework construction made of steel with spans of 68 meters in the two edge fields and 102 meters in the middle opening, which rested on auxiliary pillars made of steel. The carriageway slab was made of reinforced concrete and was designed with a width of 7.5 meters for one lane in each direction of travel.
Until the release of the makeshift in 1950, the motorway traffic was directed through the Limburg city center. In 1949, up to 6,000 vehicles a day were counted on the inner-city motorway route.
Bridge 1965 to 2016
| Lahntal Bridge Limburg (1965) | |
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| construction | Prestressed concrete - box girder bridge |
| overall length | 396.5 m |
| width | 2 × 15.0 m |
| Longest span | 68 m |
| Construction height | 4.0 m |
| height | 57 m |
| building-costs | 11 million DM (today's purchasing power approx. 22.4 million €) |
| start of building | 1960 |
| opening | 1965 |
| closure | 2016 |
From 1960 to 1965 the construction as a modern prestressed concrete girder bridge was carried out by the company Wayss & Freytag , based on a special design by the engineer Hermann Bay and the architect Wilhelm Tiedje . The cost was 11 million German marks . One part was opened to traffic on May 31, 1963 and the rest on July 30, 1965.
Foundation and substructures
The abutments and pillars were founded flat on rock , the existing foundations of the river piers were reused. The pillars, which were up to 49 meters high, had a rectangular hollow cross-section with a pull of 1.3 percent in the transverse direction and 1.5 percent in the longitudinal direction. At the pillar head, the external dimensions were 6.77 meters by 3.86 meters with a wall thickness of 30 centimeters. Inside the southern abutment there was a buttress of the old bridge from 1939, which was included in the new construction.
Superstructures
The superstructure of the prestressed concrete bridge, a continuous girder system with seven fields, consisted of two single-cell hollow boxes with a center distance of 14.6 meters. The superstructures were each 15 meters wide and prestressed in the longitudinal and transverse directions, with a constant construction height of 4 meters. The bridges were inclined 1:10. The spans for the 7-span bridge were 46 meters - 53 meters - 59 meters - 68 meters - 63 meters - 57 meters - 50.5 meters. The bridge had a floating bearing with the fixed bearings on the three high pillars of the valley.
Construction work
The pillars were made with sliding formwork. The superstructure of the internal fields was in section lengths of 4 meters with abgespanntem via auxiliary pylons cantilever concreted, the end panels were produced on a stationary shoring.
Remnants of a pillar from the 1930s inside the southern abutment of the subsequent structure
Interior of the box girder
Look through the box girders
Underside and pillars seen from the south side
Bridge soffit
Repairs 1981, 2004
Due to cracks in the construction joints of the superstructure, repairs were carried out in 1981 by crack injection and reinforcement by applying reinforced concrete straps in the area of the moment zero points. In 2003, the regular structural inspection of the motorway bridge revealed that it urgently needs to be repaired. An emergency repair and renewal of the carriageway slabs strengthened the structure for another ten years in 2004 and 2005. In addition, the superstructures were reinforced by installing prestressing steel with external prestressing.
From 2013, dismantling
In 2013, after preliminary planning, the construction of a new motorway bridge over the Lahn began a short distance away. In the same year, a real estate company was considering building residential buildings on the previous bridge. This triggered a significant political debate in the region and a far wider media coverage. In a decision on November 17, 2014, the Limburg city council rejected any development on the bridge.
The dismantling of the old Lahntalbrücke was awarded for 14.1 million euros gross. The superstructures were dismantled in 2016/2017 with the help of prop scaffolding . Six pillars were blown up on August 27, 2017. The remaining pillars were demolished by machine. The demolition work was finished at the end of February 2018.
Bridge since 2016
A realization competition was put out to tender for a new bridge that had moved away from the previous location with four lanes each and one hard shoulder per directional lane. The winner in April 2008 was a design by a working group made up of the construction office community building from Kempten and the architects' office Karl + Probst from Munich.
A girder bridge 450 meters long and 62 meters high with seven spans and spans of 45 to 90 meters was built accordingly . The bridge piers, founded on pile head beams with bored piles with a diameter of 1.5 meters and a maximum length of 20 meters, are arranged outside the Lahn. There is a superstructure with two haunched , longitudinally pre-tensioned box girders for each direction of travel . The construction height is a maximum of 5.5 meters above the pillars and a minimum of 2.5 meters in the middle of the bridge. Two reinforced concrete round columns with a maximum diameter of 2.8 meters each carry a superstructure in the transverse axes of the bridge. Steel composite columns were provided in the design planning. On the western side, facing the city, there is a five meter high, transparent, infilled noise barrier.
The bridge was built in cantilevered sections in five-meter-long sections with auxiliary piers, which were located directly next to the bridge piers, as a stabilization measure. The auxiliary piers stood on hydraulically movable foundations, which were moved laterally after the first superstructure was completed for use in the second superstructure.
In the spring of 2010 the first subsoil investigations for the foundation of the new building were carried out and in the summer of 2012 archaeological excavations were carried out in the Roman camp Limburg, which was newly discovered during the preparatory work . The groundbreaking ceremony took place on June 8, 2013. At the end of 2015, the eastern half (carriageway towards Cologne) was completed to the point that traffic in both directions was provisionally routed over this structure and the demolition of the old viaduct could begin. The second part of the structure (road towards Frankfurt) was completed by the end of 2016. The construction of the bridge had a net contract value of 40.6 million euros.
The new bridge was built east of the existing bridge. As a result, the slight curve in the motorway in the southern approach to the bridge also disappeared. The total costs of the project, which in addition to the new construction and dismantling of the Lahntal Bridge also included the changed route to 2.3 km in length, the renovation of the Limburg-Süd junction and several noise barriers, were given as 92.7 million euros gross (as of December 2016 ).
literature
- W. Henne, H. Bay: The new construction of the motorway bridge over the Lahn near Limburg . In: Bauingenieur 40 , born 1965, issue 3
- Jennifer Verhoeven: "... perfection was once achieved here." The Reichsautobahnbrücke by Paul Bonatz near Limburg a. d. Lahn . In: Denkmalpflege & Kulturgeschichte , 2/2007, pp. 2–8.
- Annett Nusch, Norbert Nieder: The new Lahntal Bridge Limburg as part of the BAB 3 - competition and design . In: Beton- und Stahlbetonbau 11/16 , pp. 759–775
Web links
- DEGES website on the new construction of the Lahntalbrücke Limburg
- Pictures of the construction of the Reichsautobahnbrücke Limburg from 1937 to 1939. Search in "Historical picture documents from Hessen". In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
- Pictures of the demolition of six pillars on August 27, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manual traffic counting BAB 2015. BASt Statistics, 2015, accessed on July 11, 2018 . (PDF file; 336 kB)
- ↑ a b Roland May: Pontifex maximus. The architect Paul Bonatz and the bridges. Monsenstein and Vannerdat , Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-86991-176-2 , p. 633
- ↑ Paul Bonatz: Living and Building. Engelhornverlag, Stuttgart 1950.
- ↑ Roland May: Pontifex maximus. The architect Paul Bonatz and the bridges. Monsenstein and Vannerdat , Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-86991-176-2 , p. 371
- ↑ Roland May: Pontifex maximus. The architect Paul Bonatz and the bridges. Monsenstein and Vannerdat , Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-86991-176-2 , p. 372
- ↑ Jennifer Verhoeven: “… perfection was once achieved here.” The Reichsautobahnbrücke near Limburg a. d. Lahn . In: Denkmalpflege & Kulturgeschichte , 2/2007, pp. 2–8.
- ^ Helmut Weihsmann: Building under the swastika. Architecture of doom. Promedia, Vienna 1998. ISBN 3853711138 .
- ^ Fritz Leonhardt : Brücken / Bridges ; German publishing company; Stuttgart 1982; ISBN 3-421-02590-8 ; P. 226
- ↑ Replacement of the Lahntalbrücke near Limburg with reconstruction of the Limburg-Süd junction - information event in Limburg City Hall. (PDF file; 1.6 MB) Hessian Road and Traffic Administration , May 3, 2011, accessed on October 9, 2014 .
- ↑ Tanja Küchle: Living on the motorway bridge: Why Limburg could soon get a new landmark. In: The main thing is culture. Hessischer Rundfunk , October 24, 2013, archived from the original on September 3, 2014 ; Retrieved September 3, 2014 .
- ↑ Dismantling the Lahntalbrücke Limburg as part of the A3: Announcement of awarded contracts, ausschreiben-deutschland.de, October 20, 2015
- ^ Hessenschau: The old A3 bridge piers are blown up with a delay
- ↑ A 3 Lahn Bridge Limburg. Hessen Mobil, accessed on July 25, 2016 .
- ↑ PM VM NEW LAHNTALBRÜCKE OPENED NEAR LIMBURG . In: Hessen Mobil - Road and Traffic Management . December 2, 2016 ( hessen.de [accessed December 4, 2016]).
- ↑ Replacement of the Lahntal Bridge Limburg with adaptation of AS Limburg Nord: Announcement of awarded contracts. ausschreibung-deutschland.de/, April 11, 2013, accessed on October 9, 2014 .
- ↑ Current projects: New construction of the Lahntal bridge on the A3. City of Limburg, accessed October 9, 2014 .
- ↑ New Lahn valley bridge opened near Limburg | Information portal Hessen. In: www.hessen.de. Retrieved December 4, 2016 .