The two largest Polish concrete bridges – design and construction

Abstract

The road infrastructure in Poland has been intensively developed and modernised over the last years. During the past decade more than 2500 new bridges have been built along the main roads and motorways, including several large multi-span structures with a length of more than 500 m. This paper describes the design and construction of the cable-stayed bridge in Wrocław and the extradosed bridge in Kwidzyn. Both structures are the largest concrete bridges built in Poland and are also among world leaders in their class. They can presently be considered to be the greatest achievements of Polish civil engineering. The Rędziński Bridge over the Odra River in Wrocław is a 612 m long cable-stayed bridge with two spans of 256 m suspended to a single 122 m high concrete pylon. The bridge in Kwidzyn is a 808 m long six-span extradosed bridge with two longest spans of 204 m. The paper concludes with a brief comparison of both structures including consumption of materials and costs.