Darlington Upgrade Project: bridge design for manufacture and assembly

The Darlington Upgrade Project consists of the upgrade of approximately 3.3 kilometres of the existing Main South Road forming part of the Adelaide North-South Transport Corridor. It has eight bridges including three long-span composite steel box girder overpasses providing grade separations at key intersections. This paper will focus on the technical design of the project’s three composite steel box girder bridges and the challenges involved in employing the ‘Design for Manufacture and Assembly’ principles on the bridge superstructures. The key innovations and construction initiatives implemented for the overpasses included off-line assembly of the bridge superstructures on temporary towers in a construction yard, use of precast concrete ‘biscuit’ permanent formwork panels with integral barrier shells in lieu of conventional proprietary formwork panel systems, use of Self-Propelled Modular Transporter (SPMT) technology to transport the bridges into place and the real time monitoring of the bridge behaviour during transportation and installation. At the time of the first bridge installation in 2017, it was the first SPMT bridge installation in Australia and the bridges remain by far the largest SPMT installations to date. The technique is gaining attention due to its ability to improve safety and shorten construction programs by reducing the number of road or rail occupancies required to construct the bridge superstructures. There are, however, a number of factors that influence the feasibility and success of using SPMT installations that will be addressed in the paper, including the nature of the site, bridge type and geometry and the availability of skilled resources and equipment.

Media Info

  • Pagination: 13p
  • Monograph Title: 11th Austroads Bridge Conference, Adelaide, 15th-18th November 2022

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01901678
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: ARRB Group Limited
  • Files: ITRD, ATRI
  • Created Date: Dec 7 2023 2:53PM