The Uddevalla Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge

Cable-stayed bridge

A cable-stayed bridge is a bridge that consists of one or more columns , with cables supporting the bridge deck....

 crossing Sunninge sound

Sound (geography)

In geography a sound or seaway is a large sea or ocean inlet larger than a bay, deeper than a bight and wider than a fjord; or it may be defined as a narrow sea or ocean channel between two bodies of land ....

 near Uddevalla

Uddevalla

Uddevalla is a city and the seat of Uddevalla Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 30,513 inhabitants in 2005.It is located at the bay Byfjorden, of the south-eastern part of the sea known as Skagerrak...

 in the province of Bohuslan

Bohuslän

' is a Swedish traditional province, or landskap, situated in Götaland on the northernmost part of the country's west coast. It is bordered by Dalsland to the northeast, Västergötland to the southeast, the Skagerrak arm of the North Sea to the west, and the county of Østfold in Norway to the north...

 on the west coast of Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. The bridge was constructed as part of the rerouting of the European route E6

European route E6

European route E 6 is the designation for the main north-south road in Norway, and the west coast of Sweden, running from the southern tip of Sweden, at Trelleborg, into Norway and through almost all of the country north to Finnmark. The route ends close to the Norwegian border with Russia...

 outside Uddevalla, which reduced traffic congestion in the city and shortened traveling distance by 12 kilometers.

Dimensions

The total length is 1712 meters (5617 feet), with a main span of 414 meters (1358 feet), there are a number of small approach spans at each end, and the two cable stayed side spans are 179 meters (587 feet) each. The clearance below the bridge is 51 meters (167 feet), and the two pylons

Abutment

An abutment is, generally, the point where two structures or objects meet. This word comes from the verb abut, which means adjoin or having common boundary. An abutment is an engineering term that describes a structure located at the ends of a bridge, where the bridge slab adjoins the approaching...

 are 149 meters (489 feet) tall. The cables are organised in the fan arrangement.

The bridge was constructed between 1996 and 2000 and was opened for traffic on May 20, 2000.

Construction notes

Structural engineering for the bridge was carried out by Johs Holt AS

Johannes Holt

Johannes Holt was a Norwegian resistance member, engineer and mountaineer.He grew up in Andebu and took his construction engineering education at the Norwegian Institute of Technology. He worked with bridges in the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, and also participated in the Norwegian...

, and Skanska Teknik AB. Skanska AB also served as general contractor, with subcontractors Alpin Technik und Ingenieurservice GmbH (general), VSL International (cables), mageba (bearings), and PERI GmbH

PERI GmbH

With a turnover of 825 million euros in 2010, the German company is one of the largest manufacturers and suppliers of formwork and scaffolding systems worldwide. The company's headquarter is located in Weißenhorn, Germany...

(Formwork and Scaffolding)

The cables are steel and the deck is composite steel-reinforced concrete, while the pylons are reinforced concrete. About 9,000 metric tonnes of structural steel and 35,000 cubic meters of concrete were used. The Skanska site (linked below) gives a project cost of SEK 723 M/ USD 85 M in 2000 currency values.

There is a problem with ice sticking to the cables in the winter, which can fall onto cars. The bridge has to be closed a few times per year for this reason. The alternative road is 12 km longer.
Civil engineers have tested PETD (a way to use a burst of electricity to remove ice caked on walls or windows. For surfaces coated with a special film, the jolt gets rid of ice in less than a second, far less time than it takes to hack at it with an ice scraper.) and decided to cover the Uddevalla Bridge in a 12-mil-thick PETD foil to keep it from icing over.

External links

• Swedish Road Administration's picture page
• Virtual Reality stress analysis of the bridge, as well as flythroughs.
• A high-tech way to defrost, PETD article on CNet < to do: create "PETD" page