(Changjiang Daily) Three Gorges ship lift – the ship lift with world’s most difficult technique and the largest scale entered into the trial navigation stage formally on September 18. And it is also the last construction project of the world’s largest water control project Three Gorges Project. On September 25, after 22 years’ design and construction, the Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) with diameter of 500m which has also known as “Sky-eye” has been put into formal use in Guizhou, China. Two days later, the main bridge of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge – world’s longest sea-crossing bridge opens to traffic on September 27.
       Within this half a month, China’s super engineering projects have refreshed the world’s record continuously. The most exciting is that enterprises from Wuhan have participated in the design and construction of three of the above super engineering project and contribute the Wuhan power to Chinese construction.
       Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd has made outstanding contribution to Chinese “Sky-eye”
       Hoisting 4450 Reflective Panels Precisely

500m diameter FAST located in Pingtang County, Guizhou Province

       (Journalist Wang Wenhan, Reporter Xiaojia) The completion ceremony of World’s largest 500m diameter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) was held in Pingtang County, Guizhou Province on September 25 and this “sky-eye” which has attracted the world’s attention opened its eye finally. It would look up at numerous stars and expand the horizon of human being to explore the universal mystery to the edge of the universe and maintain the international leading level in the next 20 to 30 years.
       The construction of FAST has collected the wisdom and sweat of numerous scientists and constructors; also it could not do without the diligent pursuit and insistent effort of staffs in Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd behind.
The installation project of reflector units in the charge of Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd has been recognized as one of three difficulties in the entire construction. The installing position of 4450 reflector units of FAST project were distributed at the 500-meter aperture spherical cable net and the spacial node sets that are 4.3m-50m away from the ground and the difficulty in spacial span and range of hoisting has never been seen before; reflector units are made from aluminum alloy pipe truss structure with total of 216 types and divided into two shapes namely, triangle and special quadrangle. The deformation and precision of the reflector units need to be controlled strictly during the aerial installation; when installing the reflector units, there are also interference and product protection issues with other sub-systems of the engineering project and these need to be solved once for all.
       At 11:45 of July 3, the hoisting of last reflector unit of FAST was finished which stand for the completion of the main project of FAST. The final hoisting technique is rather sophisticated and the distance between other pieces is 56mm and that of each bolt is 1mm. The journalist from Changjiang Daily has ever witnessed the entire process of hoisting of the last reflector unit. The installation of reflector unit has been completed one month ahead of time and there is no accident in 311 days’ construction. Both the quality and reputation of Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd have been praised by the owners and the party at the field greatly.
       At the end of August, the installation of FAST has carried out the acceptance on schedule and won the assurance and praise of the assessment team 
       The installation of FAST has improved the special equipment installing ability of Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd comprehensively and achieved the 4 authorized patents, 2 provisional patents and 1 innovative technology subject achievement.
       Based on the above achievements, Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd has gained the honorary titles of “good project department” and “unit with outstanding contribution” issued by National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
       Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd has been responsible for manufacturing world’s largest “ship elevator”
       Ship could pass through Three Gorges Dam in 40 minutes

Trial Navigation Field of Three Gorges Ship Lift

       (Journalist Wang Wenhan) At 15:20 of September 18, as the broadcast of “the ship is now allowed to enter into the ship box” sounding, No.9 Yangtze Three Gorges ship drove into the ship bearing box of Three Gorges ship lift slowly from the upper reaches to the lower reaches of the dam, marking the final of the Three Gorges Engineering project, the world’s largest ship lift constructed by Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd – Three Gorges ship lift enters into the trial navigation stage formally.

       The trial navigation would last for half a year and is the pre-stage of the formal navigation of Three Gorges ship lift during which the stability and reliability of the operation of Three Gorges ship lift could be improved gradually.

       Ship could go through Three Gorges Dam by “elevator” in 40 minutes

       The size of the Three Gorges ship lift is 3000 ton level, the total climbing tonnage is about 15,500 ton and the maximum lifting height is 113 meters, turning to be the ship lift with the world’s highest difficulty and largest scale and known as the world’s largest “ship elevator”. Ships would take this “elevator” to go through the Three Gorges Dam for only about 40 minutes to 1hour.The construction and utilization of the Three Gorges ship lift have provided rapid passages for the ships.

       Under the unified guidance of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group has been responsible for manufacturing and installing the main equipment ship bearing box structure and mechanical equipment of the Three Gorges ship lift. Directing at the features and difficulties in manufacturing and installing Three Gorges ship lift, Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group has divided the Three Gorges ship lift to ten stages, namely, structure manufacturing, mechanical equipment manufacturing, structure installation, mechanical equipment hoisting, mechanical equipment installation, system assembling, single machine commission, on-line debugging, full-scale ship debugging and trial navigation stages. Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group would carry out the research and analysis to the key technique of each stage to develop boring integration processing equipment, large-scale screw assembling machine, define the key technique schemes for giant box girder precision control technology, ship box structure installation pre-deformation technology, ship box driving system installation technology, security institution and interlock institution installation technology and finish various technique innovation achievements.

       Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group began the field installation of Three Gorges ship lift since October 2012, during which it has overcome a lot of bad factors and succeeded in completing the installation of the ship box structure of super-large scale ship lift and the relevant domestic original mechanical equipments.

       200-meter-long synchronizing shaft system makes individual manual rotation come true

       By the end of year 2013, Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group finished the test of Three Gorges ship lift and succeeded in completing two important experiments to the installation of synchronizing shaft system of Three Gorges ship lifts driving institution and leakage working condition of ship box.

       It is reported that the requirement to the precision of the installation of synchronizing shaft system is so high that within the 200 meters length range, the concentricity needs to reach 1mm which is rare in nationwide. With the unremitting endeavor of all the staff, the project department has overcome various difficulties, surmounted various technical issues, succeeded in completing the installing task of synchronizing shaft system with all the installation precision reaching the regulated technical requirements and achieved the favorable comments from owners and experts. And the free rotation of 200-meters-long synchronizing shaft system conducted by individual manually and the miracle that four drive points reaching at the same time even gained the praise from Three Gorges Group Co., Ltd.
       Ship box water leakage working condition refers to the situation that when the simulating the emergency in ship box, the water inside the box would be empty to make it 8500 ton lighter than the weight balancing and the systemic balance broken. At this time, the security institution would lock the ship box automatically to guarantee the safety of the ship box. This time’s working condition experiment is very dangerous and the tension on the ship box is up to 8500 ton which would have extremely high requirement to the overall manufacturing and installation quality of the ship box structure and security institution. The entire experiment process is safe and smoothly and the ship box locked by the security institution is immovable. The success of the experiment fully reflected the high quality of the welding to the ship bearing box structure and the installation to the security institution which would provide powerful guarantee to the safe operation of the Three Gorges ship life.
       By December 2015, Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group finished the first full-scale ship experiment. In order to make sure the efficiency and stability of the entire operation of the ship lift, the engineering technicians of Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group carried out the deep research to the control theory and optimize the system of Three Gorges ship lift further to make the controlling act experiment on numerous mechanical equipment of Three Gorges ship lift, draw out a set of systemic debugging plan. During the debugging process, they conduct the strict control, step-by-step promotion and further perfection to finish the various sections of full-scale ship and trial navigation.

       60% of engineering of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is “made in Wuhan”
       “Embroidery” in long wave and surge

       Upper Tower Column with “sailing” shape of Jiuzhou Shipping Channel Bridge is in vertical swing lifting Photographed by Yang Wei
       (Journalist Han Wei, Reporter Zhang Jing, Sui Yehui, Liu Jiahua) Recently, the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge – the main bridge of Hong Kong- Zhuhai- Macao Bridge over Lingdingyang Bay has started working and its service life could be 120 years. In the construction of this super engineering project, almost 20 enterprises from Wuhan participated in the design and construction and 60% of the project is “made in Wuhan”. Chinese top bridge and tunnel engineers have opened the innovation route over the Lingdingyang Bay and created numerous world firsts to make up for the technical gaps. At present, the journalist of Changjiang Daily is close to the design and construction team to disclose the unknown back story.

       Working between “seabed and mountain peak” and along the main airline of Macao Airport
       Bridge Construction Standard is higher than Developed Countries including the UK and USA
       In September 27 when the main body of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge begins working, the project manager Tan Guoshun of China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge project also had his 64th birthday and it is also his fifth birthday on this project. He said that he had served although over the regulated age and made effort to finish the last works of his professional career. This is the perfect footnote of his 46-years bridge construction career. As the Chinese bridge constructer, he was rather proud.

       In the construction of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge, China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd has been responsible for building Jiuzhou Channel Bridge, non-navigation bridge and Zhuhai-Macao port artificial island cross structure which accounting for 1/3 of offshore bridge construction. The complicated seabed structure, severe natural environment and super long sea crossing distance are the huge challenges.
       Lingdingyang Bay with two deep-ocean trench is the largest trumpet form estuary over the Pearl River. Long wave and surge are the biggest “a lion in the way”. Tan Guoshun said that in the surge, the composite beam would shake with the hook back and forth. And one of the composite beam weighs up to 2000 ton, once it falls down, the pier, crane ship even the constructer would suffer the catastrophe! “The time spent on constructing the beam is four to five times longer than the normal one.”
       There are boulders with high-intensity distributing at the bottom of the sea like “mountain peak at the seabed” so that piling turns to be the great difficulty.
       “During the drilling construction, there are three piers confronting with boulders at the last pile which would make the drill hard to drill into or the hole site incline.” Wang Yixin, the deputy manager of China Railway major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd Jiuzhou shipping channel section said that “when faced with the heavy sea, the hook of 800 ton floating crane would sway left and right for 2 meters and under such circumstance, the construction is just like ‘embroider over the sea’ which is too difficult to finish.”

       No.26-9 pile is 71 meters long but 40 meters of it is filled with boulder which could only be cracked down with hammer for one and a half month.
       Even constructing under such severe environment, the construction standard of this bridge still ranks first in the world. Tan Guoshun introduced, for example, cushion cap and pier shaft are pre-manufactured in the factory for only one time which has created the record worldwide; what’s more, hoisting the giant cushion cap and pier shaft together with thousands of toms weight, embedding them under the seabed and connecting with the pile foundation precisely is also the first attempt in the world.
       “The vertical deviation of installing the cushion cap and pier shaft should be controlled with 1/3000 as required while 1/100 was even allowed in the former bridge construction; the horizontal shift should be less than 1 cm.” Tan Guoshun said, “And this is greatly higher than the bridge standard of developed countries such as the UK and the USA.”
       What’s more, Jiuzhou Shipping Channel Bridge constructed by China Railway major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd is on the main airline of the Macao airport, therefore, when hoisting the “sailing-shaped” upper tower column weighing up to 1168 tons, the super-high giant crane ship and crane machine could not be used. This is rather difficult.
       Tan Guoshun said, the technical team has overcome the difficulties and invented the technology that could realize the overall “vertical lifting” once a time and it is also the first trial worldwide – hoisting the entire upper tower column to the vertical movement slide way pre-assembled on bridge surface, using hydraulic jack to lift the upper tower column slowly and moving along the slip track to make it rotate vertically step by step.

       Xu Yu, the general engineer of China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd Second Company section recalled and said, before hoisting one of “sailings”, he stayed at the field for three days and nights and slept for less than 5 hours. The vertical rotation lifting has lasted from 8 o’clock in the morning to the 11 o’clock in the evening. As the field director saying “lifting has been done”, the site was filled with loud cheers, “I am so excited!” The success of this plan also fills up the empty in this field in China.
       Team with 500 staffs have insisted in independent research and development for 6 years on the isolated island
       Inspiration from human vertebral column breaks the foreign countries’ technical monopoly
       Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge island tunnel project is the only tunnel with deeply immersed tube and the largest immersed tube tunnel in the world, combined by 33 immersed tubes. Each immersed tube is 180 meters in length and 80,000 tons in weight equaling to a aircraft carrier. 

       “Pre-manufacturing the immersed tube in such large scale is the first attempt in China and even in the worldwide there is still not too much experience could be referred to.” Zhou Guangqiang, the general engineer of China Communication Construction Company Second Harbor Engineering Company Ltd Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge island tunnel project said.
       At the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, the project department of China Communication Construction Company Second Harbor Engineering Co., Ltd stepped on the isolated island over the open seas of the Zhuhai – Niutou Island and started the construction of pre-manufacturing factory for immersed tube. On this isolated island there is no water and electricity, and various equipments and raw materials such as steels, river sand, stone, cement and additives were shipped from the land. 
       “We are crossing the river by feeling the stones.” Zhou Guangqiang said, in order to master the pre-manufacturing technology of the tunnel with the world’s largest immersed tubes, they had ever investigated in companies from Netherlands and Japan. However, they only provided the technical consultation and the core technology would be kept secret. “At that time, the entire team work together – they would be certain to carry out the independent research and development to lay the technical foundation for Chinese maritime super bridge tunnel project in the future.”
       Concrete of the immersed tube is just like the fat and physical body of human beings and the reinforcing steel bar is like backbone. Because the overall rigidity of reinforcement cage is comparably soft, when conducting the reinforcement cage incremental launching experiment in immersed tube full-scale model testing section, the great deformation and bad stability would influence the installing precision and pre-manufacturing quality directly.

       For a moment, the technical team felt embarrassed. One day, Zhou Guangqiang felt extremely uncomfortable after bending over the desk to research for a long time and he used his hand to support the waist unconsciously. And then the clarity occurred to him suddenly: it is the vertebral columns that makes soft body of human beings stand erectly and sit stably. So why not add the “vertebral columns” to the reinforcement cage? Therefore, “stiff skeleton” of reinforcement cage came into being. After adding the stiff skeleton, the overall rigidity of the reinforcement cage has been improved so greatly that there would no displacement and deformation during pushing process.
       In August 2012, Zhou Guangqiang leaded his team to realize the breakthrough in domestic seabed immersed tube pre-manufacturing field. Finally, the dosage of entire steel framework equals to that of the whole Eiffel Tower.
       China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group has been in charge of the construction monitoring to the island tunnel engineering project. Jiang Weiping, the vice director of director’s office of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge island tunnel project said, when connecting these 33 immersed tubes as the aircraft carrier in the changeable ocean current, the deviation shall not be over than 4 cm, “just like threading the needle in the wind.”

       Since stepping on the isolated island to this September, 16 pipe joints have been pre-manufactured, more than 500 people, including managing staff, technician and first-tier operators have stayed on this island for almost 6 year and China Communication Construction Company Second Harbor Engineering Company Ltd has been responsible for about half of the task on pre-manufacturing of the entire subsea channel immersed tubes. Zhou Guangqiang, 42 years old, said that living in the isolated island is just like being imprisoned and he only went back to his hometown Chongqing for four times.

       At present, the 28 pipe joints of subsea tunnel have been laid and the whole construction would continue to go through the Lingdingyang Bay, the completion of this giant “aircraft carrier” can be expected soon.