Paul Sauer Bridge

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Coordinates: 33 ° 58 ′ 6 ″  S , 23 ° 55 ′ 54 ″  E

Paul Sauer Bridge
Paul Sauer Bridge
use Road bridge
Convicted N2 National road N2
Crossing of Storms River
place near Stormsrivier, Eastern Cape , South Africa
construction Concrete arch bridge
overall length 192 m
Number of openings a
Longest span 100.6
height 123 m
start of building 1954
completion 1956
planner Riccardo Morandi
location
Paul Sauer Bridge (South Africa)
Paul Sauer Bridge

The Paul Sauer Bridge , also Storms River Bridge , is a road bridge that crosses the Storms River gorge on the Garden Route on the South African national road N2 near Stormsrivier in the Eastern Cape Province . It is 583 km from Cape Town and 166 km from Port Elizabeth . It is named after Paul Olivier Sauer (1898–1976), a long-time minister of the National Party .

construction

The bridge is one of the three large concrete arch bridges along the N2 , along with the Bloukrans Bridge (1984) and the Van Stadens Bridge (1971).

The Paul Sauer Bridge was built from 1954 to 1956 according to the plans of the Italian engineer Riccardo Morandi . The 192 m (630  ft ) long arched bridge crosses the deeply carved gorge of the Storms River at a height of 123.4 m (405 ft). Her from a reinforced concrete - concrete box of existing arch has a span of 100.6 m (330 ft).

The pavement board is not, as is usually the case, supported by vertical supports, but by three thin struts each, the upper and lower ends of which are always the same distance along the pavement board or on the arch. As a result, the struts are inclined further outwards as the distance from the bridge apex increases. To compensate for this, the struts standing outside the arch on the slope of the gorge are slightly inclined towards the bridge - with a decreasing slope towards the outside.

The arches were initially only concreted up to the base of the second struts, supported on auxiliary supports. The rest of the arches were concreted in an almost vertical position on the joints attached there. Then these sections were lowered to the middle of the arch at the same time until they met and supported each other. Immediately beforehand, Morandi had lowered one half of the arch onto an auxiliary support erected in the middle of a footbridge with a span of 70 m, which was built near Vagli Sotto in the province of Lucca and is now called Ponte Morandi . He further developed and simplified this process for the Storms River Bridge. It was later used by BUNG engineers in the construction of the Argentobel Bridge (1983–1986) and is more commonly used in the People's Republic of China .

A few years later Morandi designed the similar but much larger Ponte Bisantis in Catanzaro , Italy .

The Paul Sauer Bridge was renovated in 1986.

Web links

Commons : Paul Sauer Bridge  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The History of the Storms River Bridge ( Memento of the original dated August 6, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Total Village Tsitsikamma @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / stormsriverbridge.co.za
  2. ↑ The dates and dimensions were taken from the dedication plaque on the bridge.
  3. ↑ Paul Sauer Bridge. In: Structurae with a sketch of this process
  4. ↑ Leonardo Fernández Troyano: Bridge Engineering. A global perspective. Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puentes, Thomas Telford 2003, ISBN 0-7277-3215-3 , pp. 291, 339
The shadow of the bridge over the Storms River canyon