The five-day testing completed on Aug. 25, with details of the project made available to media.

A testing team drove 96 trucks to designated places on the bridge, the BBC reports. 

The bridge deck is 2,083 ft above a river, which the BBC said will “set a record for both the world’s highest bridge and largest span above a mountainous area.” Set to open in September, it is in Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.

Lei Min, load test director, told China-based CCTV that “we simulate extreme conditions with 3,360 tons of load to activate the maximum capacity of the bridge structure under normal use.”

According to a primer on bridge load testing published by the Transportation Research Board in 2019, bridge load testing goes back throughout history. Load tests have also been part of bridge inspection procedures dating to 1891.

According to the primer’s introduction, “in times when engineering models were not as accurate and available as today, a critical step in the construction of a bridge was to load test prior to opening or during the opening ceremony.”

The primer adds that “performing the load test and measuring deflections demonstrated to the public that the bridge was safe.”

Several bridges, such as a steel framework bridge over the Morava River near Ljubitschewo, Serbia, a road bridge near Salez, Switzerland and a suspension bridge in Maurin, France, collapsed during such load tests.

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The project team has found that erecting the structure is a singular construction challenge. Unlike more standard precast segmental bridges, the vast majority of the arches’ 345 precast segments are so different from each other that it was next to impossible for precaster Rizzani de Eccher to standardize their construction.

“This is the most complex design-build segmental bridge, honestly, in the world,” says Riccardo Castracani, the firm’s business development director. “We’ve never encountered something of this magnitude,” he adds, referencing the company’s global experience. “As complex as it looks from afar, you can multiply that by ten” when scrutinized closely.

A view of the Signature Bridge Arch 5 as Archer Western-de Moya Joint Venture nears final erection in August.
Photo by Nicole Bryant, the Corradino Group/Courtesy FDOT

For the overall project, and especially the Signature Bridge, Oscar Gonzalez, senior community outreach specialist for the state DOT, notes that the team makes extensive efforts to keep the community apprised of the project’s progress on current and future activities via its project website and weekly emails to roughly 4,000 subscribers, he says.

Monthly stakeholder meetings, open to the public, attract representatives of local venues—such as the nearby performing arts center—and elected officials, he adds.

With three of the bridge’s six arches now erected in the heart of Miami, the complex design remains in the spotlight for the builders.

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