The Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge on the Qingfu Highway integrates a number of international and domestic leading technologies, and has become a benchmark for transportation engineering in the new era with a number of technological breakthroughs, profound cultural connotations and significant people's livelihood value. Recently, the reporter visited the site of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge on the Qingfu Highway of the G312 line and the Qingfu Highway Project Office of the Provincial Public Transport Construction Group to gain an in-depth understanding of the "most beautiful bridge" between the Yellow River canyon from the four dimensions of honor value, design concept, core technology and people's livelihood benefits.

　　Honor Value:

　　The dual manifestation of industry recognition and regional benchmarking

　　Behind the "National Most Beautiful Bridge Nomination Award" is the comprehensive affirmation of the comprehensive value of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge by authoritative institutions. The reporter learned that the selection was initiated by "Bridge" magazine, and the second selection selected 20 shortlisted bridges from 86 declared projects across the country, and finally a jury composed of more than 200 top bridge experts in the industry and 20 architectural and landscape experts determined the list of winners through multi-dimensional professional review, on-site speech defense, comprehensive voting and other links, and the selection criteria covered five core dimensions: structural rationality, environmental harmony, visual artistry, cultural creativity, and public perception. Its authority and professionalism are very influential in the industry. As the only bridge selected and awarded in Northwest China, the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge not only fills the gap in this category of awards, but also shows the highest level of traffic engineering construction in Northwest China to the whole country.

　　Wu Weihong, deputy chief engineer of Gansu Transportation Planning Survey and Design Institute Co., Ltd. and director of the Bridge Technology Research Institute, is the chief designer of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge, and he said that he was shortlisted for the "National Most Beautiful Bridge Nomination Award": "We are deeply honored to be able to display on the same stage as many kilometer-level cross-sea bridges and century projects in China. As the only bridge shortlisted in the Northwest Region, it represents not only a project, but also a technical attitude that grows upwards in a difficult environment. We are proud of it and cherish it. ”

　　Honor carries high praise for scientific and technological innovation. The reporter learned that before winning the award, Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge has won 3 science and technology awards from China Highway Construction Industry Association and 1 science and technology award from China Steel Structure Association, forming 16 provincial and ministerial construction methods, 36 utility model patents, and releasing 1 provincial local standard. The superposition of these honors confirms the bridge's breakthrough contributions in seismic technology, intelligent construction, and the application of new materials, and its innovative achievements not only serve its own construction, but also form replicable and generalizable technical standards and experiences, providing valuable reference value for similar projects.

　　From the perspective of regional development, this honor is an important milestone in the high-quality development of Gansu's transportation industry. As an important node of the ancient Silk Road, Gansu has always been a major transportation route, but the complex geographical environment has long restricted the level of transportation construction. The completion and award of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge marks that Gansu has ranked among the advanced ranks in the country in the field of extra-large bridge construction, and has achieved a leap from "catching up" to "leading". This not only enhances the brand influence of Gansu Transportation, but also enhances the confidence of regional transportation construction and lays the foundation for the promotion of subsequent major projects.

　　Design concept:

　　The organic unity of natural symbiosis and cultural inheritance

　　The "beauty" of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge is rooted in its design concept deeply rooted in regional characteristics. The design team abandoned the industrialized design model of "one side of a thousand bridges", with "form follows the force, overcoming difficulties and innovation" as the core, deeply integrating the bridge structure with the natural environment and traditional culture, and achieving the perfect balance between engineering rationality and humanistic sensibility.

　　"The connection between the diamond-shaped bridge tower and the spire is determined by the force, and the landscape does not add redundant decorations, but only the connection is innovatively designed as a spatial intertwined Silk Road flying line steel pipe structure, so that the diamond-shaped bridge tower naturally incarnates as a thread shuttle, thus casting a visual symbol of 'thread shuttle as a bone and silk thread as a vein', which not only echoes the place name of the mulberry garden, but also realizes the structural interpretation of sericulture culture, Silk Road spirit and farming civilization." Wu Weihong told reporters that the spatial weaving of steel pipes is more condensed into Chinese knot images such as eight-way knots, double-line knots, and double fish knots, which sublimate the bridge structure into a carrier that carries the code of civilization while pinning on the vision of safe transportation.

　　The reporter learned that the special geographical location of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge determines the birth of the "Twin Towers" bridge, and in the face of complex working conditions such as the 8-degree high seismic zone of Sangyuanzi Canyon, 22 seismic fault zones, and canyon winds, it is necessary to closely combine the structural form with seismic demand. The design of the diamond-shaped "twin towers" is not only a visual innovation, but also comes from rigorous mechanical deduction, the cable-stayed cable and the main beam form a stable triangular force system, which greatly improves the torsional self-vibration frequency and critical flutter wind speed of the beam body, and enhances the ability to resist wind and earthquake. At the same time, this way of integrating cultural elements into the structural design avoids the simple stacking of cultural symbols, realizes the inheritance of "culture without trace", and makes the bridge a vivid carrier for telling the story of the Silk Road and the Yellow River.

　　Wu Weihong told reporters that as a key project of National Highway 312 across the Yellow River, the Sangyuanzi Bridge needs to be integrated into the traffic picture on both sides of the Yellow River that has been formed by the three railway lines of Longhai, Baolan and Lanyu during the design. "The cable-stayed bridge of the sub-tower has been built at home and abroad, but the severe environment of the seismic zone where the Sangyuanzi Bridge is located finally uses buckling support to connect the cable-stayed tower structure, becoming the first cable-stayed bridge using this technology." He said.

　　Core technology:

　　Innovative breakthroughs and domestic practices to overcome difficulties

　　The completion of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge is the result of collaborative innovation of a number of core technologies. In the face of multiple challenges such as 8-degree earthquake zones, canyon windy environments, and complex geological conditions, the project team has achieved a number of technological breakthroughs "from 0 to 1" by jointly tackling key problems with top scientific research institutes and universities in the United Nations, and built a set of full-life cycle construction technology system covering construction management, design, construction, and operation health monitoring, demonstrating the hard core strength of China's bridge construction.

　　"During the construction of the bridge, it has successively overcome technical problems such as large-diameter ultra-long pile foundations, large-volume concrete pouring at one time, three-section assembly of steel truss beams and two-section pouring of wet joints, millimeter-level closing of the main beam temperature matching, and residual stress relief of steel beams, realizing the localization of 650-ton viscous dampers, and developing 8,000-ton metal energy dissipators, the latter two technologies are the first in China." According to Wang Wei, chief engineer of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge project of Gansu Road and Bridge Construction Group Co., Ltd., in terms of steel structure application, the bridge is the first to use coating-free weathering steel for the whole bridge in Gansu Province, which does not need to be coated with an anti-corrosion layer, and relies on its own dense oxide layer to resist corrosion, which not only reduces pollution during the construction process, but also reduces the maintenance cost in the later stage. "This material has the characteristics of high strength, high performance, corrosion resistance, etc., and uses the method of 'rust to rust and rust prevention' to prevent the steel structure from rusting due to a long time, and its appearance will gradually evolve with time and gradually integrate with the surrounding natural environment, realizing the unity of durability and environmental protection, which is also one of the highlights of our science and technology bridge."

　　At the same time, as a major project in the Upper Yellow River Ecological Reserve, the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge has always adhered to the construction concept of "environmental protection first", innovated and applied a number of green construction technologies, and achieved a win-win situation between engineering construction and ecological protection. In the construction of pile foundation, through the collaborative operation of the sediment separator and the slurry separator, the whole process realizes zero discharge of borehole mud, completely eliminating the pollution of the water body of the Yellow River during construction; In terms of dust control, fog cannon machines, sprinkler systems and other equipment are used to normalize water and dust reduction in the construction area; transport vehicles strictly implement the closed transportation, washing and cleaning system to avoid dust pollution of the surrounding environment; During the construction process, vegetation belts are laid on the banks of the Yellow River to ensure that the ecological environment is effectively protected. The implementation of these green construction measures has not only met the needs of transportation development, but also practiced the concept of "lucid waters and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains", and has become a vivid practice of ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin.

　　People's livelihood value:

　　Transportation empowers the diversified radiation of regional development

　　As an important control project of the Qingfu Highway of Line G312, the construction of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge started on February 27, 2020, and the whole line was completed and opened to traffic on January 1, 2025. Before the completion of the bridge, the traffic bottleneck in the Qingfu section of the G312 line had long restricted the travel efficiency of Lanzhou and surrounding areas. Sangyuanzi Canyon has a steep terrain, the original roads are winding, the traffic capacity is low, the safety hazards are great, the traffic time from Lanzhou to Yuzhong, Dingxi and other places is long, and the cost of cargo transportation is high. The completion of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge directly opened up this traffic bottleneck, made the Qingfu Highway run through, and formed a fast track in the eastern part of Lanzhou.

　　"We rely on the G312 Qingfu Highway to carry out the pilot project of 'vehicle-road collaborative innovation and development' transportation power, and have built nine creation tasks covering smart bridges, smart tunnels, vehicle-road collaborative application support, lane-level control, etc., and built the Qingfu Highway into the first 5G+ smart highway in our province that integrates all-factor perception, all-weather commuting, whole-process management and all-round services," said Liu Bo, director of the engineering technology department of the Qingfu Project Office of Gansu Public Transport Construction Group.

　　The completion of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge is a livelihood project that benefits people's livelihood and empowers development. The bridge connects the section from Qingshuiyi in Yuzhong County, Lanzhou City to Fujiayao in Anning District, with a total length of 959 meters and a main span of 328 meters, and the design of 8 lanes in both directions makes it have strong traffic capacity, fundamentally improving the regional traffic pattern, further improving the layout of the national highway network, strengthening Gansu's status as a transportation hub in the northwest, and making Lanzhou an important node connecting the eastern coast and the northwest inland. From the perspective of travel experience, after the opening of the bridge, the travel time from Lanzhou to Yuzhong has been shortened by about 40 minutes, and the transportation links between Lanzhou and surrounding cities such as Dingxi and Baiyin have become closer, which not only facilitates the daily travel and commuting of the masses, but also reduces the cost of logistics and transportation, provides an efficient channel for the transportation of bulk commodities and the export of agricultural products, and benefits millions of people along the line.

　　◆Reporter's notes

　　"This bridge has been built to the heart"

　　Standing on the viewing platform of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge, the diamond-shaped "twin towers" pierce the sky, and the cable-stayed cables are powerful in the sun, reflecting the sound of the Yellow River. After an in-depth interview, I learned that behind this "most beautiful" is countless games with nature, and this landmark that integrates the "Ping An Centennial Quality Project" and "Smart Bridge" is not only the pilot result of the transportation power, but also the epitome of the spirit of generations of builders taking root in the northwest and bravely climbing the peak.

　　For the people along the line, the opening of the Sangyuanzi Yellow River Bridge has brought the most direct improvement in people's livelihood, and after the opening of the Qingfu Highway, the time and space distance between Yuzhong and the main urban area of Lanzhou has been greatly shortened, and the former traffic bottleneck has been turned into a hub for regional linkage. During the interview, a sentence from a local fellow was moving: "In the past, it was a few minutes to cross the river and go around the mountain road, but now it can be reached in a few minutes, and this bridge has really been built into our hearts." At this moment, I deeply understand that the title of "the most beautiful bridge" lies not only in its majestic posture across the canyon, but also in its warm background of connecting people's livelihood and empowering development. (Reporter He Yixuan)