On June 12, 2018 local time in United States, the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge, designed and maintained by China Railway Major Bridge Reconnaissance & Design Institute Co., Ltd (BRDI), won the Arthur G. Hayden Medal of the 35th International Bridge Conference (IBC).
At the conference, Wan Tianbao, Deputy Chief Engineer of BRDI and chief designer of Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge, introduced the key technology and functional requirements of the bridge design. He pointed out that the shape of the bridge was "thin as wings and light as swallows". The structural stiffness ensured that no vibration could be detected by tourists. At the same time, he pointed out that with the construction of the bridge, the construction of suspension bridges in China has come to the stage of multi-functional suspension bridges based on customized and personalized needs.
The International Bridge Conference (IBC), sponsored by the United States, enjoys a high reputation in the international bridge industry and is known as the "Nobel Prize" in the bridge industry. There are 7 awards for Bridge Technology in the conference, which are awarded and commended for excellent bridge engineering in terms of design, practicability, concept and environmental resources. Among them, Arthur G.Hayden medal is awarded for bridge engineering with outstanding achievements in the convenience and non-traditional design of bridges.
Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge is a multi-functional suspension bridge that spans the canyon with functions of architectural landscape, extreme experience, and deductive stage and so on. In the design, the technical problems such as the design of large open space cable system, the stress of glass deck, the wind resistance of structure, human-induced vibration, the durability of structure and the adaptability of structural deformation of multi-functional space cable-deck glass suspension bridge have been successfully solved, and the world's largest span glass bridge and the world's first space cable-deck Canyon glass bridge have been created.
The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon glass bridge between canyons has a span of 430 meters and a width of 6 meters, and its deck is about 300 meters above the bottom of the canyon. From a distance, the glass bridge in Zhangjiajie is permeable, light and thin, like the cicada wing and together with the surrounding beautiful and natural scenery it has melted into a perfect picture, perfectly deducing the "great image has no form" landscape design requirements. Since its opening to the public in August 2016, the bridge has been a hot spot of tourism. It is difficult to get a ticket. It has created a new tourism mode to meet the individual needs of tourists.
Besides Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge, which won the Arthur G. Hayden Medal, BRDI, as the top bridge design institute in China, has won the George S. Richardson Medal of the IBC three times for Wuhan Tianxingzhou Yangtze River Bridge, Nanjing Dashengguan Yangtze River Bridge and Ma'anshan Yangtze River Bridge. This not only marks a breakthrough in the field of bridge design in the world, but also marks a higher quality step for China to become a powerful bridge country in the world.
