2018/03/30
Reported by: Wong Wei-Jhih / Summary Report
The follow-up Kinmen Bridge project, which has entered a more promising phase, finally saw significant breakthrough and progress as the first pile was placed erect out of the sea in the deep trench area. On March 12th, immediately after the 2.5-diameter pile was placed, Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chi Wen-Chung arrived at Kinmen to recognize the efforts of the construction team on behalf of Minister Hochen Tan. He also expressed his expectation that the progress of the follow-up bridge construction would be accelerated now that the team has gained experience from the placing of the first pile.
The deep trench area piling project, which is considered as the key to successfully constructing Kinmen Bridge, was taken over by Dongpi Construction Co. on December 28th, 2016. Over the past year, Dongpi actively deployed more than 20 marine machines, small and large, which are required for the construction, including 3 jack-up barges and 2 floating concrete mixing plants. The former ones are rarely seen in domestic marine engineering projects. Professional marine piling subcontractors from Taiwan and Korea were also recruited for the project. They used 2.5-diameter reverse circulation drilling (RCD) rigs and all-casing drilling rigs to carry out the piling work at the same time.
According to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), the construction team has overcome multiple challenges under the temperature of 5°C and below and chilling wind, including northeast monsoons at level 7-8, strong ocean currents that flow at the rate of 1.4 meters per second, and hard granite. On March 12th, the technical personnel of Dongpi completed the placing of the first pile, which has a diameter of 2.5 meters and a length of 58.2 meters, at P48 Pier in the deep trench area. The Korean subcontractor then completed the placing of the second pile, which is 45.2 meters long, at P46 Pier in the deep trench area on March 27th. These achievements not only dissolved the doubt that Taiwan does not have the capability to place piles with a diameter of 2.5 meters, but also served as concrete results for speeding up the progress of placing 174 piles in the deep trench area. Moreover, to improve construction quality and efficiency in the deep trench area, the subcontractors planned to change from the originally developed cast-in-place cantilever method to the precast segmental launching method to construct box beams. The production of precast segments is expected to begin this August for the launching after the pier columns are constructed. This change will efficiently improve the upper structure and speed up the overall project progress.
The MOTC pointed out that since the precast segment plant is located in Singda Harbor, Kaohsiung, as many as 268 tons of precast segments will be transported to Kinmen from Singda Harbor in the future. This scale of marine transportation and the launching of 47-meter-high box beams on the sea will be the first in the domestic construction history. The construction management and launching operations will be quite challenging, but results are worth waiting for.
The MOTC also described the concrete results and breakthroughs of the Kinmen Bridge project as “a skyrocketing pillar out of the sea.” Although the follow-up project is full of challenges such as environmental limitations and requirements for special construction methods, the MOTC stressed that the entire construction team will make utmost efforts to accelerate the construction progress and open the bridge for traffic as scheduled.