A wooden bridge for a load of 60 tons has been built over the Vircavas River in Jelgava county, the county municipality informs.
The road transport bridge was built on the Šalkas-Upmaļi-Vircava road, it was designed and built by SIA “Zaza Timber”.
The new bridge is made of wood and has an asphalt concrete surface. The bridge was built without intermediate supports to improve the flow of the river, as well as to reduce ice jams and the formation of river drifts. The length of the bridge is 23.4 meters, the span is 16 meters, the width is 7.9 meters. The bridge is designed for a load of 60 tons and its expected life span is at least 100 years.
During the reconstruction of the bridge, the existing road bridge was completely dismantled and a new bridge was built. The prop is made up of monolithic piles in reinforced concrete with a diameter of 880 mm and a length of 9 meters on the right bank and 11 meters on the left bank. The main design works were carried out by SIA civil engineers “Zaza Timber” Rainers Daugava, Pēteris Supe and Mareks Gindra.
“This bridge is special because it is the largest bridge of prestressed glued wooden beam slabs intended for road transport in Latvia, and also the only bridge of this type with an asphalt concrete surface. Although such bridges were designed and built in Scandinavia for 30 years, the experience with this type of bridges in Latvia is minimal, that’s why we mainly got information about nodes, tensioning systems, barriers, asphalt pavements, curbs, design aids, details and construction from publications, manuals and blueprints in Norway and Sweden. Furthermore, individual elements, waterproofing and barriers designed specifically for such bridges were highly sought after and were only available in Scandinavia,” comments Rainers Daugava, bridge construction engineer by SIA “Zaza Timber”.
For the “Zaza Timber Production” factory, this type of wooden bridge constructions is the sixth project for which beams are made for a slab of stretched glued wooden beams. The previous five production projects involved bridges in Scandinavia.
The bridge was built by SIA “Rīgas tilli”, the designer and supervisor was SIA “Zaza Timber Engineering”, and the timber structure manufacturer was SIA “Zaza Timber Production”.
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