On July 8, the first rotation of the Beijing-Qinhuangdao Expressway Bridge over the Beijing–Harbin Railway, with the participation of China Railway Sixth Group, was successfully completed.
The bridge is located near the First Pass Under Heaven—Shanhaiguan, with a total length of 652 meters. It spans 6 tracks of three rail lines: the Beijing-Harbin High-Speed Railway, Tianjin-Shanhaiguan Railway, and Longjiaying-Shanhaiguan Connection Line. The bridge is designed with four rotating beams, including two continuous concrete box girders, one concrete T-beam, and one steel box T-beam. The beam rotated this time was the concrete T-beam, approximately 24 meters in height and weighing about 14,100 tons.
Trains pass beneath the bridge approximately every four minutes, with around 400 trains per day. To ensure the safe rotation of the bridge and the uninterrupted operation of the three railways, the project team used BIM technology to create a 1:1 model of the construction site, with animated simulations of the T-beam rotation and equipment operation, enabling visualized technical briefings. The rotation traction system used two 450-ton continuous jacks to pull steel strands anchored around the rotating platform, generating horizontal rotational force with the upper pier cap as the axis. The entire beam rotated counterclockwise at a uniform speed of 1° per minute, taking 87 minutes to be positioned successfully, with a final measured alignment deviation of only 2 millimeters.
