Platform on civil engineering, underground infrastructure, energy, construction equipment & construction machinery
Cut and dried for DYWIDAG. Despite the use of regular systems, the pre-antenna technology supplier was able to stand out from the competition on this project as well.
"We were involved in the project by Boskalis as early as the design phase to engineer the prestressing systems as efficiently as possible," begins Robert Jansen of DYWIDAG. "As iconic as some of the structures are designed, in many cases we were able to design the prestressing systems as standard. In this case we are talking about nine structures for which we have delivered some 400 tons of prestressing systems spread over a year and a half. The bulk concerns the DYWIDAG prestressing system with 19 strands, occasionally 22 strands are used."
So most of the decks are equipped with fairly regular solutions. "Although these are substantial decks. For example, stream valley bridge Keersop consists of five segments of 62.5 meters each. With a total length of more than 300 meters, this is a large-scale work of art in the middle of nature," Jansen acknowledges. "The decks that were built in phases naturally required a bit more attention in terms of pre-stressing. They are poured in segments, while the prestressing has to be continuous. That makes it challenging, but it also provides opportunities to adjust the prestressing to demand. After all, each partial span has a different preload demand. We used our expertise to follow Boskalis' phasing. The coupling-through system was implemented with press sleeves instead of a wedge. By means of a toothed wheel with a strand shaft behind it, the chance of slippage is minimized."
For the latter, DYWIDAG has invested heavily in IT infrastructure. "We have made a huge digitization effort and we are now reaping the benefits. Our assembly crews write real-time on the construction site all clamping results directly into the cloud digitally. This speeds up the approval process considerably, so the construction process is certainly not delayed because of us. The moment the last cable is tensioned, all data are already at the structural engineer's desk for approval. In a neat, eye-catching and standardized format instead of the familiar "drafts. It was an important reason for Boskalis to choose DYWIDAG on this project," Jansen concludes.
