Erection of Steel Bridges for Shinkansen High-Speed Rail

Two lines of the Japanese high-speed rail (Shinkansen) were newly inaugurated in 2010 and 2011. In the newly constructed lines, the share of steel bridges is low. The 15 steel bridges in the new lines were selected primarily because of construction conditions, such as construction space constraints, construction period, operation time, and ground conditions. To enable construction under these constraints, the steel bridges were constructed by various erection methods. For that reason, erection methods were often taken into account in the structural planning stage. This paper describes conditions and viewpoints in the selection of construction methods for high-speed rail. When construction methods are selected, cost is a primary consideration. Conventional crane erection with temporary bents, or the crane-bent method, is a basic construction method because of its low cost. If constraints that prevented the crane-bent method from being used were encountered in the construction sites, other erection methods, such as the large block method, lateral transfer method, launching method, rotation method, and jack-up method, were selected to allow for bridges to be built under existing constraints. This paper describes each construction method and provides examples of recent steel railway bridge construction work on the new Shinkansen lines.