Bharat Vandana Park

Our structural engineers presented a creative solution to cope with the double task of allowing the thermal movement in such a long footbridge and at the same time reaching an adequate level of lateral stiffness to preserve the cable tension – a system of two Shock Transmission Units (STU) coupled with two elastomeric sliding bearings is introduced at the deck midspan to allow the flexibility of expansion under slow loads and stiff locking under fast loads. Thus allowing the whole bridge to work as a unique structure, considerably reducing the expected movements and stresses in the deck, and minimising the axial load variation in the cables.

Wrapped around each of the nine bridge concrete pylons are steel diagrids which rise to form a lotus flower at the crown of each pylon. We developed a variation of three diagrid designs, all allow the bridge cable-stays to reach the top crown of core by passing through dedicated steel tubes which act like “sleeves”. Our structural engineers improved the buildability of the tender stage design for the diagrids by using advanced geometry analysis tools to achieve consistency in angles at tube intersections while retaining the architectural intent and vision.