Cable-Stayed Bridges - Stonecutters Bridge (4)

A photo of a cable on rollers so it won't get frayed while being dragged across the deck. There must be a blue protective covering around the cable that's removed after it's in place. I  imagine the cable is attached to the superstructure first and then anchored to the tower (because the superstructure is more flexible). The tower was assembled very quickly using a piggyback form system. Cable anchor boxes were attached to the inside of the tower and then the cables were inserted into it and secured. The soil conditions turned out to be different than they had originally assumed, which delayed the project while they built deeper tower foundations. The top of the tower has a stainless steel surface with shear studs. They must have used this surface as a form for pouring the top of the tower. The superstructure segments on the main span are 28 meters long and on the back span they are 18 meters long and made of reinforced concrete instead of steel to balance the bridge during construction (and after).

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Stonecutters Bridge (4) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Stonecutters Bridge (3)

I'm standing on Tsing Yi Island looking east across Rambler Channel toward Kowloon, just north of Hong Kong Island. Yesterday, I said that the steel structure attached to the tower was a rack and pinion elevator, but in this photo it's pretty clear that it supports the tower crane.

Note the winches at the ends of the cantilevered spans. Barges bring the superstructure segments into position where they're lifted up by the winches and hung from the towers with cables.

The two steel box girder sections are held apart by long steel floor beams. The openings between the steel boxes give the bridge a nice appearance but I'd worry about someone falling through the deck!

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Stonecutters Bridge (3) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Stonecutter's Bridge (2)

I thought we could take another look at Stonecutters Bridge as long as we're in Hong Kong. It was being built when I visited and it opened for traffic on December 20, 2009.

This structure originated from a design competition won by bridge architect Dissing+Wetling and developed by Ove Arup.

The towers are made of reinforced concrete that was topped in stainless steel. Each cable had its own drum which was rolled onto the deck, attached to roller skates, and then lifted into the tower anchorages with a crane. After each main deck section was lifted up and attached to the precut cables a heavier back span segment was lifted into place to balance it.

Note the rack and pinion elevator to carry workers up and down the 960 ft tall towers. In the Google Earth photo (below) we can see the many different bridges carrying vehicles to and from Tsing Yi Island. Stonecutters Bridge is at the lower right end of the island. The Google Earth photo is from 2009 and so you can see a gap in the center of the bridge before the last piece was put in place.

Cable-Stayed Bridges - Stonecutter's Bridge (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.