The Sauer Valley Bridge is a motorway (Autobahn) bridge high above the

Sauer River The Sauer (German and Luxembourgish, , ) or Sûre ( French, ) is a river in Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. A left tributary of the Moselle, its total length is . Rising near Vaux-sur-Sûre in the Ardennes in southeastern Belgium, the Sauer ...

which at this point marks the frontier between

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It was constructed between 1984 and 1987. The bridge is long and, at the lowest point of the valley, above the valley floor. Viewed from above it is formed as a curve with a radius of . Additionally, the road surface has a constant 1% gradient. The girder bridge was built with a single superstructure for both carriage ways, and is positioned approximately a kilometer to the north of

Wasserbillig Wasserbillig ( lb, Waasserbëlleg ) is a town in the Communes of Luxembourg, commune of Mertert, in eastern Luxembourg. , Wasserbillig has 2,186 inhabitants, which makes it the largest town in Mertert. Wasserbillig is the administrative seat of ...

in Luxembourg.

Superstructure

The bridge has a steel superstructure of a constant level underpinned by a continuous support. The longest span between support pillars is , which is the span crossing the river. On the Luxembourg side, traveling from west to east, the other span widths are , and . Two more spans on the German side are of and . The lateral profile of the bridge deck comprises a single box section and an

Orthotropic deck An orthotropic bridge or orthotropic deck is typically one whose fabricated deck consists of a structural steel deck plate stiffened either longitudinally with ribs or transversely, or in both directions. This allows the fabricated deck both t ...

inclined at 3.8%. The horizontal profile of the support floor is wide. There is therefore a difference between the thicknesses of the two sides of the bridge support which is on the inner side of the road's curvature, and on the outer side.

Construction

Construction of the superstructure took place in 68 section. Each section was delivered as eight segments. The steel of the superstructure used the

incremental launch Incremental launch is a method in civil engineering of building a complete Deck (bridge), bridge deck from one abutment of the bridge only, manufacturing the Superstructure#Bridges, superstructure of the bridge by sections to the other side. In c ...

method, employing a machine using 21 pushing devices. In order to be able to use this method over the long spans of the bridge without the need for temporary supports from below, a high cable bearing moving pylon was employed, mounted on the road deck and set back from the tip of the slowly advancing structure.

References

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Superstructure

Construction

References

Further reading