Innovative bamboo plywood accelerates bridge construction

The Sava River is the largest right-bank tributary of the Danube River and crossed by the E763 Highway, Suao section, which is approximately 17.6 kilometers long, designed with a speed of 120 kilometers per hour, and a four-lane dual carriageway.

The construction of the main project of the Sava River Bridge started at the end of May 2017. Due to the terrain limitations, the south approach bridge of the Sava River Bridge has 8 spans with temporary supports for cast-in-place box girders.

In the summer of 2018, after comprehensive consideration, the project department decided to use bamboo plywood as the formwork panel for the construction of the temporary supports.

Due to the poor quality, the outer mold bamboo plywood starts to deform.

However, due to the limitations of the local procurement environment, the quality of bamboo plywood in the area was much poorer than that in China. After the construction of two box girders, the bamboo plywood could no longer meet the construction quality requirements – the outer mold bamboo plywood started to deform, which brought about the main challenge for the team.

After discussion, the team came up with an innovative method: to paste a thin layer of iron sheet to the bamboo plywood. This innovative transformation managed to save at least 20 days of construction time, and 1,600-square-meter bamboo plywood.

The construction team pastes a thin layer of iron sheet to the bamboo plywood.

On June 30, 2019, with the efforts of the construction team, the bridge was closed two months ahead of schedule. In December 2019, the Suao section was completed and opened to traffic ahead of schedule, and the Sava River Bridge was also put into operation, indicating that after the successful completion of the Zemon Bridge, the China Communications Construction Company had completed its second bridge in Serbia.