Rückbau der Rheinbrücke Wesel

Planning the deconstruction of the bridge over the Rhine at Wesel, Germany.

Following the opening of the new bridge over the River Rhine at Wesel, the old bridge, a three-span, 344 m long, steel truss structure, is completely redundant and must be taken down. As this stretch of the Rhine is crucial to shipping, the planning work had to ensure that interruptions to river traffic were ruled out or at least minimised. In order to comply with the requirements of the shipping authorities, a bespoke deconstruction concept was devised and optimised for the tender in several stages. The following article describing the deconstruction of this bridge reveals the great demands placed on design engineers when planning such work.