Millau viaduct is the best. Viaduct Millau - the highest transport bridge in the world (23 photos)

The longest suspension bridge in the world, the highest highway, the highest 343 meter bridge on earth

Construction of the Millau Viaduct

The metal span structure of the viaduct, which is very light compared to its total mass, is approximately 36,000 tons long and 32 m wide. The canvas has 8 spans.
The six central spans are 342 m each, and the two outer spans are 204 m.

The canvas consists of 173 central caissons, the real backbone of the structure, to which the side decks and outer caissons are tightly soldered.
The central caissons consist of sections 4 m wide and 15-22 m long with a total weight of 90 tons. The roadbed is shaped like an inverted wing of an airplane so that it is less exposed to wind.

Diameter of Millau Viaduct - website

Supports and pillars

Each support stands in four wells 15 m deep and 5 m in diameter

Height of supports in (m) Millau Viaduct

Pylons

Seven pylons with a height of 88.92 m and a weight of about 700 tons stand on supports. Each of them is attached to 11 pairs of guys supporting the roadbed.

Guys

The shrouds were developed by the Freissine community (Fr. RgeuvzueZ. Each rope received triple protection against corrosion (galvanization, protective wax coating and an extruded polyethylene sheath). The outer sheath of the shrouds is equipped with ridges in the form of a double helix along the entire length. The purpose of such a device is to avoid dripping water on the cables, which in case of strong wind can cause the cables to vibrate, which will affect the stability of the viaduct.

Pavement coating

To resist the deformation of the metal sheet due to traffic, the research group Appia (Fr. Arria) has developed a special asphalt concrete based on mineral resin.

Soft enough to adapt to the deformation of the steel without cracking, however, it had to have sufficient stability to meet the road criteria (wear, density, structure, grip, resistance to deformation - rubbing on the road, etc.) . It took two years of research to find the "perfect formula".

Electrical equipment of the viaduct

The electrical equipment of the viaduct is proportional to the entire huge structure. Thus, 30 km of high-voltage cables, 20 km of fiber-optic cables, 10 km of low-voltage cables were laid along the bridge, and 357 telephone connections were created so that repair teams could communicate with each other and have communication with the control center, wherever they were - on the canvas , supports or pylons.

As for the equipment, the viaduct, of course, was not left without various devices. Supports, canvas, pylons and shrouds are all equipped with a large number of sensors. They were conceived in order to track the slightest movement of the viaduct and assess its stability after wear time.

Anemometers, accelerometers, inclinometers, temperature sensors, etc. - all of them are included in the set of measuring instruments used.
12 fiber optic strain gauges were placed at the base of the P2 support. Being the highest support of the viaduct, it is subject to the greatest load.

These sensors capture any shift from the norm per micrometer. Other strain gauges, already electric, were placed on the tops of supports P2 and P7. This equipment is capable of making up to 100 measurements per second.

In strong winds, they allow you to constantly monitor the reaction of the viaduct to exceptional weather conditions. Strategically placed accelerometers on the web monitor vibrational phenomena that can affect metal structures. The location of the canvas at the level of the abutments is observed down to a millimeter.

As for the guys, they are also equipped with equipment, and their aging is carefully monitored. Moreover, two piezoelectric sensors collect a variety of traffic-related data: the weight of cars, average speed, traffic density, etc. This system is able to distinguish between 14 different types of vehicles.

The collected information is transmitted via an Ethernet-like network to a computer in the information room of the viaduct building located near the toll gate.

toll

The concessionaire's toll rate is set annually by the concessionaire in accordance with the current legislation within the framework of five-year plans, which are approved by the two parties to the agreement.

• 5.4 € for cars (7.00 € in July and August);
• 8.1 € for intermediate types of transport (10.6 € in July and August);
• 19.4 € for two-axle machines exceeding 3.5 tons (all year);
• 26.4 € for three-axle machines (all year);
• 3.5 € for motorcycles (all year).

Construction of the Millau Viaduct (chronology)

• Construction duration - 38 months
• October 16, 2001: Construction begins.
• December 14, 2001: Laying of the "first stone".
• January 2002: Laying the foundation for the supports.
• March 2002: Start of installation of abutment C8.
• June 2002: Start of installation of supports - completion of installation of C8 abutment.
• July 2002: Start of installation of temporary supports.
• August 2002: Installation of the CO abutment begins.
• September 2002: Construction of the bridge deck begins.
• November 2002: Tower P2 (highest) surpasses 100m height.
• February 25, 2003: Start of laying the roadbed.
• May 28, 2003: Pier P2 reaches a height of 180 m, thus becoming the tallest pylon in the world (previously the Kochertal viaduct held the world record). This record was broken again at the end of the year by a pole 245 m high.
• July 3, 2003: Start of the L3 site guidance process.
• The pickup was completed after 60 hours. By the end of the pickup, the roadbed was temporarily attached to the support to ensure its stability in the event of a storm with a wind speed of 185 km / h.
• August 25-26, 2003: L4 site guidance. The roadbed has shifted from the P7 pillar to the temporary Pi6 pillar.
• August 29, 2003: Joining of the roadway along the line of the Pi6 intermediate support after passing 171m. The roadbed was raised to a height of 2.4m to allow it to pass over the Pi6 temporary support. After that, Freyssinet temporarily placed the R3 pylon on the R7 support.
• September 12, 2003: Second tip (L2) 114m of metal bridge deck from the north side of the viaduct. The first pickup (L1) was made on the ground fairly close to the abutment level, allowing the procedure and the technical arrangements to be tested.
• November 20, 2003: Completion of the construction of the supports.
• March 26, 2004: Sighting of section L10 from the south side. The roadbed has reached the RZ support.
• On the night of April 4-5, 2004: The metal flooring was brought up to the P2 pillar, the highest in the world. The aiming operation was slowed down by the wind and fog that interfered with the laser aiming. By this time, 1,947 m of the roadway had been completed.
• April 29, 2004: Completion of the roadway on the north side. The edge of the roadbed was in line with Tarn. It remained to make two more pickups from the south side.
• May 28, 2004: The north and south canvases are a few centimeters apart. The connection of these parts was officially announced (in fact, the final docking was completed over the next few days).
• End of July 2004: The pylons are completed.
• September 21-25, 2004: Start of paving by Appia Group. For this, 9,000 tons of special asphalt concrete and 1,000 tons of conventional asphalt concrete were used in the center.
• November 2004: Completion of dismantling of temporary supports.
• November 17, 2004: Start of design verification (920 t total load).
• December 14, 2004: Inauguration of the viaduct by French President Jacques Chirac.
• December 16, 2004 9:00 am: Opening of the viaduct to traffic ahead of schedule (the viaduct was originally scheduled to open on January 10, 2005).
• December 18, 2004: Completion of final finishing work.

There is probably no such person who has not seen or heard about this unique and beautiful bridge, but I don’t have it in all over the world. For you to have some interest, let's approach the topic from the other side, let's look at the process of building this structure.

One of the main wonders of the industrial world of France can be safely attributed to the world-famous Millau Bridge, which is the owner of several records at once. Thanks to this giant bridge, stretching over a huge valley of the river called Tar, uninterrupted and high-speed movement from the French capital of Paris to the small town of Béziers is ensured. Many tourists who come to see this highest bridge in the world quite often ask themselves: “Why was it necessary to build such an expensive and technically complex bridge that leads from Paris to the very small city of Beziers?”. The thing is that it is in Beziers that a huge number of educational institutions, elite private schools and a retraining center for highly qualified specialists.

A huge number of Parisians enter these schools and colleges, as well as residents from other large cities in France, who are attracted by the elitism of education in Béziers. In addition, the town of Beziers is located just 12 kilometers from the picturesque coast of the warm mediterranean sea which, of course, in turn, also attracts tens of thousands of tourists from all over the world every year.

Pont Millau, which can rightly be considered the pinnacle of engineering and architects, is popular among travelers as one of the most interesting sights in France. Firstly, it offers a magnificent view of the Thar Valley, and secondly, it is one of the favorite objects for modern photographers. Photos of the Millau Bridge, which is almost two and a half kilometers long and 32 meters wide, made by the best and most reputable photographers, adorn numerous office buildings and hotels not only in France, but throughout the Old World.

The bridge is a particularly fantastic sight when clouds gather under it: at this moment it seems as if the viaduct is hovering in the air and has no support under it. The height of the bridge above the ground at its highest point is just over 270 meters. The Millau Viaduct was built for the sole purpose of unloading the national route number 9, on which huge traffic jams constantly formed during the season, and tourists traveling in France, as well as truck drivers, were forced to stand idle for hours in traffic jams.

As mentioned above, the bridge, which is part of the A75 highway, connects Paris and the city of Beziers, but it is quite often used by motorists who travel to the country's capital from Spain and southern France. It is worth noting that the passage through the viaduct, which "soars above the clouds", is paid, which does not in the least affect its popularity among drivers of vehicles and visitors to the country who came to see one of the most amazing wonders of the industrial world.

The legendary Millau Viaduct, which every self-respecting bridge builder knows about and which is considered a model of technological progress for all mankind, was designed by Michel Virlajo and the brilliant architect Norman Foster. For those who are not familiar with the work of Norman Foster, it should be clarified that this talented English engineer, made by the Queen of Great Britain to the knights and barons, not only recreated, but also introduced a number of new unique solutions to the Berlin Reichstag. It was thanks to his painstaking work, precisely verified calculations, that the main symbol of the country was literally revived from the ashes in Germany. Naturally, the talent of Norman Foster made the Millau Viaduct one of the modern wonders of the world.

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In addition to the architect from the UK, in the work on the creation of the highest highway adopted in the world by a group called "Eiffage", which includes the famous Eiffel workshop, which designed and built one of the main attractions of Paris. By and large, the talent of Eiffel and employees from his bureau has erected not only a "visiting card" of Paris, but of the whole of France. In tandem, the Eiffage group, Norman Foster and Michel Virlajo designed the Pont Millau, which was inaugurated on December 14, 2004.

Already 2 days after the festive event, the first cars drove along the final link of the A75 highway. An interesting fact is that the first stone in the construction of the viaduct was laid on December 14, only in 2001, and the start of large-scale construction started on December 16, 2001. Apparently, the builders planned to coincide with the opening date of the bridge to the date of the start of its construction.

Despite the group best architects and engineers to build the highest road bridge in the world was extremely difficult. By and large, there are two more bridges on our planet that are located above Millau above the surface of the earth: the Royal Gorge Bridge in the USA in Colorado (321 meters above the ground) and the Chinese bridge connecting the two banks of the Siduhe River. True, in the first case we are talking about a bridge that can only be crossed by pedestrians, and in the second, about a viaduct, the supports of which are located on a plateau and their height is not able to compare with the supports and pylons of Millau. It is for these reasons that the French Millau Bridge is considered the most complex in design and the highest automobile bridge in the world.

Some of the pillars of the A75 terminal link are located at the bottom of the gorge that separates the "red plateau" and the Lazarka plateau. To make the bridge completely safe, French engineers had to develop each support individually: almost all of them have different diameters and are clearly designed for a certain load. The width of the largest support of the bridge reaches almost 25 meters at its base. True, in the place where the support is connected to the roadway, its diameter narrows noticeably.

The workers and architects who developed the project had to face a whole host of difficulties during the construction work. Firstly, it was necessary to strengthen the places in the gorge where the supports were located, and secondly, quite a lot of time had to be spent on transporting individual parts of the canvas, its supports and pylons. One has only to imagine that the main support of the bridge consists of 16 sections, the weight of each of them is 2,300 (!) tons. Looking ahead a little, I would like to note that this is one of the records that belongs to the Millau Bridge.

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Naturally, vehicles that could deliver such massive parts of the pillars of the Millau Bridge do not yet exist in the world. For this reason, the architects decided to deliver parts of the supports in parts (if I may say so of course). Each piece weighed about 60 tons. It is quite difficult to even imagine how much time it took for the builders only to deliver 7 (!) supports to the bridge construction site, and this is not counting the fact that each support has a pylon a little over 87 meters high, to which 11 pairs of high-strength guys are attached.

However, the delivery of building materials to the site is not the only difficulty that the engineers faced. The thing is that the valley of the Tar River has always been distinguished by a harsh climate: heat, quickly replaced by piercing cold, sharp gusts of wind, steep cliffs - only a small part of what the builders of the majestic French viaduct had to overcome. There is official evidence that the development of the project and numerous studies lasted a little over 10 (!) Years. Work on the construction of the Pont Millau was completed in such difficult conditions, one might even say, in record time: it took builders and other services 4 years to bring to life the plan of Norman Foster, Michel Virlajo and architects from the Eiffage group.

The pavement of the Millau Bridge, like its project itself, is innovative: in order to avoid deformation of expensive metal canvases, which will be quite difficult to repair in the future, scientists had to invent an ultra-modern asphalt concrete formula. The metal sheets are quite strong, but their weight, relative to the entire gigantic structure, can be called insignificant (“only” 36,000 tons). The coating had to protect the canvas from deformation (be "soft") and at the same time meet all the requirements of European standards (resist deformation, be used for a long time without repair and prevent the so-called "shifts"). Even the most cutting-edge technologies to solve this problem in a short time is simply impossible. During the construction of the bridge, the composition of the roadway was developed for almost three years. By the way, the asphalt concrete of the Millau Bridge is recognized as unique in its kind.

Pont Millau - sharp criticism

Despite the long development of the plan, well-defined solutions and big names of architects, the construction of the viaduct initially caused sharp criticism. By and large, in France, any construction is sharply criticized, remember at least the Sacré-Coeur Basilica and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Opponents of the construction of the viaduct said that the bridge would be unreliable due to shifts at the bottom of the gorge; will never pay off; the use of such technologies on the A75 highway is unjustified; the bypass will reduce the flow of tourists to the city of Millau. This is only a small part of the slogans that ardent opponents of the construction of a new viaduct addressed to the government. They were listened to and each negative appeal to the public was given an authoritative explanation. In fairness, we note that the opponents, which included influential associations, did not calm down and continued their protests almost all the time the bridge was being built.

Pont Millau - a revolutionary solution

The construction of the most famous French viaduct took, according to the most conservative estimates, no less than 400 million euros. Naturally, this money had to be returned, so the passage through the viaduct was made paid: the point where you can pay for the “travel through the miracle of modern industry” is located near the small village of Saint-Germain. More than 20 million euros were spent on its construction alone. The toll booth features a huge covered canopy that took 53 giant beams to build. In the “season”, when the flow of cars along the viaduct increases sharply, additional lanes are used, which, by the way, are 16 at the “checkpoint”. There is also an electronic system at this point that allows you to track the number of cars on the bridge and their tonnage. By the way, the Eiffage concession will last only 78 years, which is exactly how much time the state allocated to the group to cover its expenses.

Most likely, it will not even be possible to return all the funds spent on the construction of Eiffage. However, such unfavorable financial forecasts in the group are viewed with irony. Firstly, "Eiffage" is far from poor, and secondly, the Millau Bridge served as another proof of the genius of its specialists. By the way, the talk that the companies that built the bridge will lose money is nothing more than fiction. Yes, the bridge was not built at the expense of the state, but after 78 years, if the bridge does not bring profit to the group, France will be obliged to pay the losses. But if “Eiffage manages to earn 375 million euros on the Millau Viaduct earlier than in 78 years, the bridge will become the property of the country free of charge. The concession period will last, as mentioned above - 78 years (until 2045), but the group of companies gave a guarantee for its majestic bridge for 120 years.

The four-lane Millau Viaduct is not worth the "sky-high" prices, as many might think. Passage of a car along the viaduct, the height of the main support of which is higher than the Eiffel Tower itself (!) And only slightly lower than the Empire State Building, will cost only 6 euros (7.70 euros in the "season"). But for cargo two-axle cars, the fare will be 21.30 euros; for three-axle - almost 29 euros. Even motorcyclists and people moving along the viaduct on scooters have to pay: the cost of traveling along the Millau Bridge will cost them 3 euros and 90 euro cents.

The Millau Viaduct Bridge comprises an eight-span steel roadbed supported by eight steel pillars. The weight of the roadway is 36,000 tons, width - 32 meters, length - 2460 meters, depth - 4.2 meters. The length of all six central spans is 342 meters each, and the two outer spans are 204 meters long each. The road has a slight slope of 3%, descends from the south side to the north, its curvature with a radius of 20 km in order to give drivers a better view. The movement of vehicles occurs in two lanes in all directions. The height of the columns ranges from 77 to 246 meters, the diameter of one of the longest columns is 24.5 meters at the base, and eleven meters near the roadway. Each base has sixteen sections. One section has a weight of 2,230 tons. Sections were assembled on site from separate parts. Each individual part of the section has a mass of sixty tons, seventeen meters in length and four meters in width. Each support must support pylons having a height of 97 meters. First, the columns were assembled, which were together with temporary supports, then parts of the canvas moved along the supports with the help of jacks. The jacks were controlled from satellites. The canvases moved six hundred millimeters in four minutes.

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Address: France, near the city of Millau
Start of construction: year 2001
Completion of construction: 2004
Architect: Norman Foster and Michel Virlajo
Bridge Height: 343 m
Bridge length: 2460 m.
Bridge Width: 32 m
Coordinates: 44°5′18.64″N,3°1′26.04″E

Short description

One of the main wonders of the industrial world of France can be safely attributed to the world-famous Millau Bridge, which is the owner of several records at once.

Thanks to this giant bridge, stretching over a huge valley of the river called Tar, uninterrupted and high-speed movement from the French capital of Paris to the small town of Béziers is ensured. Many tourists who come to see this highest bridge in the world quite often ask themselves: “Why was it necessary to build such an expensive and technically complex bridge that leads from Paris to the very small city of Beziers?”.

The thing is that it is in Beziers that a huge number of educational institutions, elite private schools and a retraining center for highly qualified specialists are located.

A huge number of Parisians enter these schools and colleges, as well as residents from other large cities in France, who are attracted by the elitism of education in Béziers. In addition, the town of Beziers is located just 12 kilometers from the picturesque coast of the warm Mediterranean Sea, which, of course, in turn, also attracts tens of thousands of tourists from all over the world every year.

Pont Millau, which can rightly be considered the pinnacle of engineering and architects, is popular among travelers as one of the most interesting sights in France. Firstly, it offers a magnificent view of the Thar Valley, and secondly, it is one of the favorite objects for modern photographers. Photos of the Millau Bridge, which is almost two and a half kilometers long and 32 meters wide, made by the best and most reputable photographers, adorn numerous office buildings and hotels not only in France, but throughout the Old World.

The bridge is a particularly fantastic sight when clouds gather under it: at this moment it seems as if the viaduct is hovering in the air and has no support under it. The height of the bridge above the ground at its highest point is just over 270 meters.

The Millau Viaduct was built for the sole purpose of unloading the national route number 9, which constantly formed huge traffic jams during the season, and tourists traveling in France, as well as truck drivers, were forced to stand idle for hours in traffic jams.

Pont Millau - construction history

The legendary Millau Viaduct, which every self-respecting bridge builder knows about and which is considered a model of technological progress for all mankind, was designed by Michel Virlajo and the brilliant architect Norman Foster. For those who are not familiar with the work of Norman Foster, it should be clarified that this talented English engineer, knighted and baroned by the Queen of Great Britain, not only recreated, but also introduced a number of new unique solutions to the Berlin Reichstag. It was thanks to his painstaking work, precisely verified calculations, that the main symbol of the country was literally revived from the ashes in Germany. Naturally, the talent of Norman Foster made the Millau Viaduct one of the modern wonders of the world.

In addition to the architect from the UK, a group called Eiffage, which includes the famous Eiffel workshop, which designed and built one of the main attractions of Paris, took part in the creation of the highest transport artery in the world. By and large, the talent of Eiffel and employees from his bureau has erected not only a "visiting card" of Paris, but of the whole of France. In tandem, the Eiffage group, Norman Foster and Michel Virlajo designed the Pont Millau, which was inaugurated on December 14, 2004.

Already 2 days after the festive event, the first cars drove along the final link of the A75 highway. An interesting fact is that the first stone in the construction of the viaduct was laid on December 14, only in 2001, and the start of large-scale construction started on December 16, 2001. Apparently, the builders planned to coincide with the opening date of the bridge to the date of the start of its construction.

Despite a group of the best architects and engineers, building the highest road bridge in the world was extremely difficult. By and large, there are two more bridges on our planet that are located above Millau above the earth's surface: the Royal Gorge Bridge in the USA in Colorado (321 meters above the ground) and the Chinese bridge connecting the two banks of the Siduhe River. True, in the first case we are talking about a bridge that can only be crossed by pedestrians, and in the second, about a viaduct, the supports of which are located on a plateau and their height is not able to compare with the supports and pylons of Millau. It is for these reasons that the French Millau Bridge is considered the most complex in design and the highest automobile bridge in the world.

Some of the pillars of the A75 terminal link are located at the bottom of the gorge that separates the "red plateau" and the Lazarka plateau. To make the bridge completely safe, French engineers had to develop each support individually: almost all of them have different diameters and are clearly designed for a certain load. The width of the largest support of the bridge reaches almost 25 meters at its base. True, in the place where the support is connected to the roadway, its diameter narrows noticeably.

The workers and architects who developed the project had to face a whole host of difficulties during the construction work. Firstly, it was necessary to strengthen the places in the gorge where the supports were located, and secondly, quite a lot of time had to be spent on transporting individual parts of the canvas, its supports and pylons. One has only to imagine that the main support of the bridge consists of 16 sections, the weight of each of them is 2,300 (!) tons. Looking ahead a little, I would like to note that this is one of the records that belongs to the Millau Bridge.

Naturally, vehicles that could deliver such massive parts of the pillars of the Millau Bridge do not yet exist in the world. For this reason, the architects decided to deliver parts of the supports in parts (if I may say so of course). Each piece weighed about 60 tons. It is quite difficult to even imagine how much time it took for the builders only to deliver 7 (!) supports to the bridge construction site, and this is not counting the fact that each support has a pylon a little over 87 meters high, to which 11 pairs of high-strength guys are attached.

However, the delivery of building materials to the site is not the only difficulty that the engineers faced. The thing is that the valley of the Tar River has always been distinguished by a harsh climate: heat, quickly replaced by piercing cold, sharp gusts of wind, steep cliffs - only a small part of what the builders of the majestic French viaduct had to overcome. There is official evidence that the development of the project and numerous studies lasted a little over 10 (!) Years. Work on the construction of the Pont Millau was completed in such difficult conditions, one might even say, in record time: it took builders and other services 4 years to bring to life the plan of Norman Foster, Michel Virlajo and architects from the Eiffage group.

The pavement of the Millau Bridge, like its project itself, is innovative: in order to avoid deformation of expensive metal canvases, which will be quite difficult to repair in the future, scientists had to invent an ultra-modern asphalt concrete formula. The metal sheets are quite strong, but their weight, relative to the entire gigantic structure, can be called insignificant (“only” 36,000 tons). The coating had to protect the canvas from deformation (be "soft") and at the same time meet all the requirements of European standards (resist deformation, be used for a long time without repair and prevent the so-called "shifts").

Even the most cutting-edge technologies to solve this problem in a short time is simply impossible. During the construction of the bridge, the composition of the roadway was developed for almost three years. By the way, the asphalt concrete of the Millau Bridge is recognized as unique in its kind.

Pont Millau - harsh criticism

Despite the long development of the plan, well-defined solutions and big names of architects, the construction of the viaduct initially caused sharp criticism. By and large, in France, any construction is sharply criticized, remember at least the Sacré-Coeur Basilica and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Opponents of the construction of the viaduct said that the bridge would be unreliable due to shifts at the bottom of the gorge; will never pay off; the use of such technologies on the A75 highway is unjustified; the bypass will reduce the flow of tourists to the city of Millau. This is only a small part of the slogans that ardent opponents of the construction of a new viaduct addressed to the government. They were listened to and each negative appeal to the public was given an authoritative explanation. In fairness, we note that the opponents, which included influential associations, did not calm down and continued their protests almost all the time the bridge was being built.

Millau Bridge - a revolutionary solution

The construction of the most famous French viaduct took, according to the most conservative estimates, no less than 400 million euros. Naturally, this money had to be returned, so the passage through the viaduct was made paid: the point where you can pay for the “travel through the miracle of modern industry” is located near the small village of Saint-Germain.

More than 20 million euros were spent on its construction alone. The toll booth features a huge covered canopy that took 53 giant beams to build. In the “season”, when the flow of cars along the viaduct increases sharply, additional lanes are used, which, by the way, are 16 at the “checkpoint”. There is also an electronic system at this point that allows you to track the number of cars on the bridge and their tonnage. By the way, the Eiffage concession will last only 78 years, which is exactly how much time the state allocated to the group to cover its expenses.

Most likely, it will not even be possible to return all the funds spent on the construction of Eiffage. However, such unfavorable financial forecasts in the group are viewed with irony. Firstly, "Eiffage" is far from poor, and secondly, the Millau Bridge served as another proof of the genius of its specialists. By the way, the talk that the companies that built the bridge will lose money is nothing more than fiction. Yes, the bridge was not built at the expense of the state, but after 78 years, if the bridge does not bring profit to the group, France will be obliged to pay the losses. But if “Eiffage manages to earn 375 million euros on the Millau Viaduct earlier than in 78 years, the bridge will become the property of the country free of charge. The concession period will last, as mentioned above - 78 years (until 2045), but the group of companies gave a guarantee for its majestic bridge for 120 years.

The four-lane Millau Viaduct is not worth the "sky-high" prices, as many might think. Passage of a car along the viaduct, the height of the main support of which is higher than the Eiffel Tower itself (!) And only slightly lower than the Empire State Building, will cost only 6 euros (7.70 euros in the "season"). But for cargo two-axle cars, the fare will be 21.30 euros; for three-axle - almost 29 euros. Even motorcyclists and people moving along the viaduct on scooters have to pay: the cost of traveling along the Millau Bridge will cost them 3 euros and 90 euro cents.

Viaduct Millau (Millau) - Viaduc de Millau the highest bridge in the world. Its largest bridge abutment is 343 meters high. Weight 36,000 tons, and seven steel pylons of 700 tons each. The length of the viaduct is 2,460 m. Two pillars reach the highest height on the planet (P2 = 245 m and P3 = 221 m)

It crosses the Tarna valley at an altitude of about 270 m above the ground. The 32 m wide roadbed is four-lane (two lanes in each direction) and has two spare lanes. stands on 7 supports, each of which is crowned with 87 m high pylons (11 pairs of shrouds are attached to them).

The 20 km radius of curvature allows vehicles to follow a more precise path than if it were a straight line, and gives the viaduct the illusion of never-ending.

Concrete structures provide fastening of the roadbed to the ground at the Larzaka plateau and the red plateau, they are called abutments.

Characteristics of the Viaduct Millau (Millau) - Viaduc de Millau

Scheme of the cable-stayed bridge of the Millau viaduct (Millau) - Viaduc de Millau

Stages of construction of the Millau Viaduct

1st stage. Construction of intermediate supports

The support has a complex geometry, narrowing towards the top with vertical slots to create shadows.

Support of the Millau Viaduct - website

The supports were constructed using vertical self-climbing formwork. 16 thousand tons of reinforcement went into the construction of the Millau Viaduct. The total height of the supports is more than a kilometer.
Sections for concreting equal in height to 4 m. The shape of the formwork had to be changed more than 250 times.

Support of the Millau Viaduct - website

The length of all reinforcing bars is 4000 km, which is the distance from the viaduct to central Africa. If they make a mistake when concreting by 10 cm, then the support will not converge by 10 cm. GPS navigation was used in the construction of the supports, the measurement error is 4 mm, the error in the construction of the support in terms of 2 cm.

A day late on the Millau Viaduct costs the contractor $30,000. The numbering of 7 pillars starts from the north of the valley.

200 thousand tons of concrete for the construction of the viaduct.

2nd stage of construction. Longitudinal Sliding

Longitudinal sliding of a superstructure weighing 36 thousand tons on the Tarn River at a height of 270 m. The superstructure of the Millau Viaduct is designed from steel with a total length of 2.5 km. The company that was engaged in the manufacture of the superstructure was the Eiffel company.

The company produced 2,200 span blocks weighing up to 90 tons, some of them reaching 22 m in length. Accuracy in manufacturing was achieved using a laser. Metal cutting was fully automated using a plasma cutter, every detail with complex geometry was cut out without problems. The temperature of the cutter reached 28 thousand degrees Celsius.

The thrust was carried out from two sides, and there must be connections over the Tarn River. For the longitudinal sliding of the viaduct, they used (a receiving console for running into a temporary support and a main support) and a pylon for additional rigidity of the superstructure.