Tailor Made Concrete Structures – Walraven & Stoelhorst (eds)

© 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-47535-8

Rapid construction of long span precast concrete box girders for Incheon
Bridge viaducts constructed with FSLM

K.Y. Choi, D.O. Kang, K.L. Park, C.H. Lee, H.Y. Shin & M.G. Yoon
Samsung Corporation, Seoul, Korea

ABSTRACT: The FSLM (Full Span Launching Method) is being successfully applied to the viaducts of the
Incheon Bridge. This method made it possible to construct the long marine viaducts over 8kilometers within
3 years. The integrated monitoring of a girder with 50 m span was conducted through the whole construction
sequences. It verified the applicability and efficiency to the rapid construction of marine bridges with FSLM.

1 INTRODUCTION It is composed of 3 types of bridges, cable stayed

Incheon bridge is the longest causeway in Korea that is
underway presently.The viaduct part of Incheon bridge
is about 8 km and this comes to the 75% of the whole
span. For the successful construction within the short
period, around 3 years, the FSLM has been applied
to the viaduct part(Shin et al, 2007). In this study, a
brief introduction and several new concepts applied to
the FSLM are presented for the whole sequences from
fabrication to erection of a 50 m precast concrete box
girder. Simple static loading test was conducted and
the result verified the safety and stability of the girder
with FSLM.
2 INCHEON BRIDGE PROJECT
Incheon bridge is designed based on the AASHTO
LRFD Bridge Design Specification (AASHTO, 1998).
bridge, approach bridge and viaduct. General outline
of this bridge project is presented in Table 1. The
main span of the cable-stayed bridge is 800 m, but
the viaduct is the longest as 8,400 m, which makes
up around 75% of the whole spans.
The superstructure of viaduct is designed to be a
5 span continuous pre-stressed concrete box girder,
of which the length is 50 m for each span with the
uniform height of 3 m and the design strength for 28
days of applied concrete is 45 MPa. The full viaduct
is consisted of 336 units and the weight of each one
is around 1350 tons. The simple dimension of each
segment is shown in figure 1.
In this project, several developed technologies are
applied for rapid construction. Each 50 m-long con-
crete box girder is fabricated by 2 day cycle using
steam-curing system and pre-tension method. One
production line is composed of a series of two sets,
where one is for rebar work and the other is for

Table 1. General outline of Incheon bridge project.

Span
length Sub-structure
Item (m) (Drilled Shaft) Super-structure

West Viaduct 5,950 (
1.8,
2.4 or
3.0) + -shaped bent FSLM

Approach 889 (
2.4) BCM
Cable Stayed Bridge Side span 80 + 260 (
3.0) Steel Deck
Main span 800 (
3.0) + Inversed Y shaped concrete Pylon
Side span 260 + 80 (
3.0)
East Approach 889 (
2.4) BCM
Viaduct 2,450 (
1.8,
2.4 or
3.0) + -shaped bent FSLM
Sum 11,658 (on shore part is excluded )

1189
Figure 1. Sectional dimension and holding up/down device.
Table 2. Construction sequence.
pre-tensioning, concrete placing and steam-curing.
The pre-tensioning method simultaneous in both lon-
gitudinal and transverse directions is one of the
core technologies in rapid fabrication. Furthermore,
deflected pre-tensioned tendons were designed in
these long span girders using the specially designed
holding up/down devices as shown in figure 1.
This speedy fabrication is exquisitely harmo-
nized with FSLM using large facilities and spe-
cially designed equipments. The overhead crane with
1400 ton-capacity pulls up a girder and loads it on a
barge. Then, the girder is loaded again on the spe-
cially manufactured carrier by F/C(floating crane). It
1190
Figure 2. Static loading test for the check of long-term
stability.
is designed to distribute the whole weight to both lines,
which elevates the sectional effectiveness of the girder
design. Transporting by this carrier not only solves
the access problem of F/C due to the shallow sea but
considerably accelerates the transporting time. Finally,
the girder is settled on a pier by launching gantry and
the launching gantry proceeds to the next pier. The
fabrication and erection sequences of the viaducts at
Incheon bridge project are summarized in Table 2.
3 MONITORING PROGRAM
For the check of long-term stability of the erected
girder, simple static loading test was conducted for
one year. The dead load of a new girder on the carrier
is the governing load in the serviceability limit state,
so some of the repeated loading times were chosen for
the test. Strains and stresses were measured at both
top and bottom fibers using strain gages and effective
stress meters. The exact weight of the loading was
also measured and its location was recorded. Figure 2
shows the test and its result. Under the repeated load-
ing, the influence lines show the same value and
consistent result with the analytical one. At the maxi-
mum load, the stress of bottom fiber was maintained
in the compressive region as shown in figure 2. All
the responses showed the linear-elastic behavior under
the repeated instantaneous loading, so the long-term
stability could be verified.
4 CONCLUSION
– The applicability and efficiency of FSLM has been
verified from the engineering viewpoint.
– The long-term stability of the girder has been ver-
ified through the repeated static loading test. The
stress at the bottom fiber was stably maintained in
compressive region.
1191
REFERENCES
AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications, American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Offi-
cials, 2nd Edition, Washington, D.C., USA, 1998.
Shin, H.Y., Okamoto, H., Park, K.L. and Lee C.H., “Man-
ufacture and Erection of FSLM Concrete Box Girder at
Incheon Bridge”, Magazine of the KCI,Vol.19, No.3, May,
2007, pp. 31–37.