ZPMC held the commencement ceremony for the largest self-elevating gravel leveling barge on July 20th, which is the core equipment for gravel base paving under deep water developed independently by ZPMC for Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge Project and will provide support for successful construction of immersed tunnel of the Bridge.
The gravel leveling barge can be used for gravel bedding pavement as the necessary core equipment for seabed tunnel construction. The leveling barge developed by ZPMC for Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge will be the largest deep water leveling barge in the world, surpassing the gravel leveling barge Jinping No. 1 by ZPMC for the island and tunnel construction of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. The Barge with gravel dropping and highly accurate leveling capacity will be used for paving the gravel bedding for all immersed tubes under the 10m-35m deep water, integrating the positioning measurement, gravel dropping under water, leveling under shallow water and quality examination. The main part of the Barge is of the loop structure with total length of 98.7m, which can perform the gravel pavement and leveling within 2,500m2 without moving the vessel.
The Barge features high automation and advanced construction control system after the completion. Meanwhile, ZPMC makes upgrading on the construction capacity and safety in the research and development, improving the accuracy and efficiency to meet the special requirements on immersed tube foundation leveling.
The Barge is predicted to arrive the site of Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge for the debugging before delivery.
Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge is the superlarge project of bridge, island, tunnel and underground traffic in the world between Shenzhen and Zhongshan of Guangdong Province. The Bridge is 24km totally with the immersed tunnel of 6.8km approximately, which is the first two-way eight-lane superwide steel shell concrete immersed tunnel in the world, with 5 technical difficulties of super width, variable width, deep embedment, large back silting and poor stability of excavated area, resulting in unprecedented scale and technical difficulty.