Construction of the Great Belt West Bridge

The Great Belt Fixed Link is one of the largest civil engineering projects in Europe. It will eventually connect the two main Danish islands, Zealand and Funen by a combined road- and railway across the 18 km wide Great Belt Channel. The eastern half of the link consists of a twin-tube bored railway tunnel and an elevated roadway bridge. The western half, from Funen to the island of Sprogø, consists of the 6.6 km long West Bridge with two individual superstructures for road and rail traffic. The tender designs comprised three alternative types of superstructures: a double-deck composite truss; independent, side-by-side, triple concrete girders; and a single wide steel box girder. Regarding the tender designs, the contractor proposed large scale prefabrication onshore followed by transport and installation offshore. Thus, the West Bridge was built of precast concrete elements joined to give 51 intermediate spans of 110 m and twelve end spans of 85 m adjacent to the expansion joints.