Erection of Viaducts for India’s Bullet Train projects speeded up by Full-Span Box Girders
National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL), the agency responsible for the creation, development & execution of the future maintenance of the Indian Bullet Train Project initiated between Mumbai & Ahmedabad.
NHSRCL officials have declared that a Full-Span Pre-Stressed Concrete (PSC) box girders will be used in the construction of the viaduct for our Nation’s first Bullet train project for the very first time in India.
The box girder spans till 40 meters are being constructed in the Navsari district of Gujrat State; the girder weighs 970 metric tons made from 42 metric tons of steel cast in a totally single piece without inputting any joints during its construction on November 1st, 2021.
The officials further stated that the concrete box girder is not only the first but also the most heavily pre-stressed box girder in the country.
For the bullet train corridor between Mumbai & Ahemdabad, NHSRCL is using the box girder to speed up the construction of the viaduct; the agency is using the full span launching way in the viaduct construction.
Larsen & Toubro built equipment & machinery that is being used for various criticality in case loadings; these machines are designed with state-of-art technology, which enables the user to optimize different material grades in combinations which prolong an efficient operation.
The box girder, after being taken by the straddle carrier from the stacking yard, was taken to the location required & a bridge gantry lifted it up for the final erection; L&T officials stated that this has helped in completing the project till the Surat- Billimora site of the project.
Pier ‘P11’ & ‘P12’ is the site wherein the box girder was placed exactly in between these two points of the pier, whose height is 13.4 meters from the ground level as per NHSRCL officials.
To speed up the construction of the viaduct, parallel development of a superstructure & a substructure is undertaken; the pile, pile caps, pier & pier caps work is also in continuous progress.
Casting yards have been developed alongside the superstructure alignment to aid proper casting of full span girders along with the segmental girders too.
To date, 23 casting yards have been developed, all facilities for making jigs of rebar cages, casting beds have been developed in the yard itself to speed up the project altogether.
The Bullet train will cover the 508 km route from Mumbai to Ahemdabad in 2hours 57 minutes, including a stoppage at 12 stations along the way. It’s expected to match the Japan bullet train speed of 320 km per hour.