The new Sotra Bridge is part of National Road 555 Sotrasambandet, a 9.4-kilometer new national road that connects Sotra with Bergen, Norway's second-largest city. The new connection will increase capacity, reduce travel time by 20 minutes, establish a modern connection for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as facilitate the export of fish, oil, and gas.
Assignement
National Road 555 Sotrasambandet is a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) project and the largest infrastructure contract in the European market, with a value of 19.8 billion NOK. In September 2021, Sotra Link was awarded the contract, and Norconsult immediately started designing the new Sotra Bridge. The bridge will be a four-lane suspension bridge with a pedestrian walkway, designed and built entirely digitally, using sustainable solutions.
Solution
The bridge will have a main span of 608 meters and a total length of 900 meters. The bridge deck will be made of steel and will be 30 meters wide. The towers will be made of concrete and will be 145 meters high. The main cable will be made of PPWS (Prefabricated Parallel Wire Strands) and anchored in the rock in a traditional manner.
With the requirement of BIM (Building Information Modeling) Level 3 for the entire project, as well as tight deadlines, Norconsult had to think about and solve complex tasks in a new way. The choice of the right tools was essential, and new methods were developed to work as efficiently as possible.
The Sotra Bridge will be the largest bridge to be digitally designed, with around 1 million objects and 60 million data points. By combining excellent engineering skills with software development, Norconsult, in collaboration with the client, has ensured that the model has 100% data quality.
Eirik Wie Furunes
Team leader long span bridges
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