The Maintenance of Silver Jubilee Bridge, UK
Abstract
The Grade II listed Silver Jubilee Bridge is a two-pinned steel arch bridge with continuous side spans spanning the River Mersey and Manchester Ship Canal. With a main span of 330 m, it is one of the largest steel arch bridges in the world. Since construction in 1961, Mott MacDonald has been employed on numerous refurbishment and strengthening commissions on the bridge to the various bridge maintainers, currently Halton Borough Council. The bridge is currently closed undergoing major refurbishment works with traffic using the recently opened Mersey Gateway Bridge 2 km upstream. Silver Jubilee Bridge is planned to reopen late 2019.
This paper presents a case study highlighting the challenges in maintaining an ionic long-span arch bridge. Recent refurbishment works described include new maintenance gantries, cathodic protection, maintenance of the locked coil cables and the challenge of maintenance painting.
Keywords
Steel arch Maintenance Cathodic protection Cable replacementNotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Bridge Engineering staff at Halton Borough Council over many years whose willingness to allow research into innovative maintenance techniques has led to the successful management of Silver Jubilee Bridge with the minimum disruption to the user.
References
- 1.Anderson, J.K.: Runcorn-widnes bridge. In: Proceeding of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. 29. pp. 535–570 (1964)Google Scholar
- 2.Lambert, P.: Silver jubilee bridge: a 25-year concrete repair strategy. Concr. Repair Bull. 30(5) (2017)Google Scholar
- 3.BS EN ISO 12696:2016 Cathodic Protection of Steel in Concrete, British Standards InstitutionGoogle Scholar
- 4.BD 37/01 Loads for Highway Bridges, The Highways Agency Design Manual for Roads and BridgesGoogle Scholar