Steel in the News
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Posted by Tasha Weiss on September 18, 2012 at 12:51 PM.
The second “big lift” for the Milton-Madison Bridge Project, which replaces the deteriorating US 421 Ohio River bridge between Milton, Ky., and Madison, Ind., was completed last week. A time-lapse video shows the 15-hour operation during which a 727-ft preassembled section of the steel truss was floated and lifted into place onto temporary piers.
The span weighs 2,067 tons (or 4.1 million lbs.) and was lifted to a height of 90 ft using special hydraulic jacks and bundled strands of steel cable. The last step in the lift process involved the intricate placement of a massive beam under the new span. The beam will be used next year when the entire truss bridge is slid from the temporary piers to the existing piers, which are being rehabbed and reused. The new bridge is expected to open to traffic in 2013.
For more information about the project, visit www.miltonmadisonbridge.com. The article “Move That Bridge” in the February 2012 issue of MSC also describes the project in detail and explains how the decision to use an innovative sliding technique stemmed from the system’s success on the Capilano River Bridge project in Vancouver, Canada.
