Asia’s longest suspension bridge

The Kanmon Bridge in Japan was officially opened on November 14, 1973. The channel bridge is preceded by two underground tunnels built in 1942 and 1958 respectively – one for railways and the other for motor traffic. Construction work was started in 1968. It is the longest suspension bridge in Asia and the 10^th longest in the world. One of the technological innovations was the employment of the parallel wire strand (PWS) method.

There are two methods of cable erection, one is the Air-Spinning Method which is the method of spinning the wires one by one in the air, and the other is the Prefabricated Parallel Wire Strand Method which is the method of bunding strands of wires previously in the shop. The latter method was adopted for the Kanmon Bridge. It was the first time in the world that the Prefabricated Parallel Wire Strand Method was adopted with the Parallel Wire Cable for such long spanned bridge as the Kanmon Bridge.

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The manhattan bridge

The Manhattan Bridge was completed at the beginning of the 20^th century. It is very pleasing in the design. Especially noteworthy is the improvement in the appearance of the towers. The flexible design of the towers permits them to bend to and fro with the variations in length and the sag of the cables, and makes possible a design of slender proportions. The Manhattan Bridge was the work of the engineers of the Department of Bridges of the City of New York. The Manhattan Bridge also represents an improvement in the technique of suspension bridgebuilding. For example, a new method for erecting the towers was devised. Each tower of this bridge consists of four steel columns, which are supported on a cast steel pedestal that rests, in turn, on a masonry pier. The tower columns were erected by the use of ingenious derrick platform (one for each pair of columns). Each platform projected out from the face of the tower and was supported by two bracket struts below. Then a derrick was mounted on the platform and the sections of the tower (weighing up to 62 tons) were lifted from the top of the pier and set in place. When a full section had been added to the tower, the derrick platform lifted itself to the next level with the aid of block and falls.

With the towers completed, the next step was the construction of a temporary footbridge, which would connect the two shores.

The Manhattan Bridge was thus the first suspension Bridge to amplify modern suspension bridge construction technique. It stands, carrying the increased loads of present-day traffic without a tremor. Architecturally and structurally, it deserves to be included among the great engineering works of the twentieth century.