China Unveils 86-foot-long 3D-printed Bridge

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January 24, 2019

China recently completed construction on the world's longest sea bridge. Now, the country has taken the wraps off the longest 3D-printed pedestrian bridge.

3D-printed pedestrian bridge

The foot traffic bridge is 86 feet long and spans a waterway in Shanghai. A team of people from Beijing's Tsinghua University School of Architecture, led by Professor Xu Weiguo, designed the bridge, based on an existing model, the Zhaozhou Bridge. That bridge, in Hebei Province, is 1,400 years old; China says that that bridge, made from limestone slabs, is the longest-standing bridge in the world.

It took the team 450 hours to complete the printing for the bridge, which was printed in 112 separate sections and then put together. Xu said that the cost was one-third of what it would have been if they had used traditional construction methods.

The team built a one-quarter scale model first, to test the strength of the design. Built into the bridge are stress and strain monitors.

The bridge is more than twice as long as the world's first 3D-printed pedestrian bridge, a 40-foot bridge that Spanish officials unveiled in a park in Madrid in 2017.

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Social Studies for Kids
copyright 2002–2023
David White

Social Studies for Kids
copyright 2002–2024
David White