Second Hooghly River Bridge

The bridge is the result of an intense, but rewarding, planning and construction process that continued for over 20 years. Back then, with a span of 457 metres, it was the largest cable-stayed bridge in Asia, designed and constructed in such a way that indigenous construction companies were able to build it relying exclusively on local labor materials. In order to enable the section-by-section assembly of the grid during cantilever erection using simple riveted joints, a simple plain steel grid with composite concrete slab was developed. The grid consists of simple open I-beams, two longitudinal beams at the edges suspended directly from cables and a load-distributing central longitudinal beam, as well as cross-girders at intervals of 4.1 m. The grid serves as the "permanet falsework" and stiffening for the subsequently manufactured 35-m-wide in-situ concrete slab that cantilevers at both sides.