Dillinger heavy plate for the Dutch railway bridge Muiderberg

As part of the largest infrastructure project currently underway in the Netherlands, the new double track railway bridge over the A1 near Muiderberg, east of Amsterdam, was officially opened on 26th August 2016.

A longer bridge was required

The project Schiphol-Amsterdam-Almere, abbreviated SAAone, is currently the largest road construction project in the Netherlands. The mega project includes i. a. the widening of the A1motorway from 2x3 to 2x5 lanes. Yet, the expansion could be only ensured if the existing concrete railway bridge at Muiderberg was replaced by a longer bridge. Because of the necessary required wide span, the most suitable solution consisted of a steel arched bridge without any intermediate support columns.

Bridge standing up to any comparison

As much steel as the Eiffel Tower, 11 meters longer than the London Bridge, weight of approximately 7,600 cars…Such comparisons emphasize the impressive dimensions of this artwork. With a span of 255 m, a width of 17 m, a height of 55 m above ground and a weight of 8,400 t, it is one of the longest, if not the longest arch bridge without intermediate supports in Europe.

High level of performance required for the steel

Slim structure, easily transportable, easy assembly of the prefabricated parts on site, these were the requirements for the design. In order to achieve these objectives, the designers and constructors set high demands to the materials and the welding technology to be used for the construction. Therefore, in order to reduce the weight, they selected the higher strength thermo-mechanically rolled steel S460M/ML. For the transverse tube beams they relied on the S355NL with highest requirements on the cold deformation (until 10 %).

For this bridge of superlatives, which won the Dutch Steel Award 2018, Dillinger supplied 8,250 t heavy plates, thereof round 7,000 t in the grade S460M/ML.