The second longest suspension bridge on Continental Europe

• Bridge to ease crossing over Danube River for 7,000 vehicles a day, replacing ferries

MILAN, June 23 2023 – Romania’s Braila Bridge is fast approaching its inaugural day. Built by Webuild in an international joint-venture, it will be the second longest suspension bridge on continental Europe. Load tests – both static and dynamic – to confirm the structure’s stability have been completed ahead of its inauguration. The first series of tests involved up to 60 trucks for a combined weight of 2,400 tonnes (equal to about 400 elephants) to check the structure’s soundness. Dynamic load testing followed with two trucks crossing the entire bridge at 80 kilometres per hour to test it for vibrations. High-precision instruments were used to monitor in real time the effect of the tests.

The Braila Bridge is the same type of structure as the projected Bridge over the Strait of Messina, which would be longer by more than half. Commissioned by the state Romanian company CNAIR on behalf of Romania’s Ministry of Infrastructure, the bridge is 1,975 metres long with a main deck of 1,120 metres. It will have four lanes, an emergency lane, as well as cycling and pedestrian paths. 

An extremely challenging and innovative project, the Braila Bridge was built with Japanese partner IHI Infrastructure Systems Co Ltd. It crosses the Danube River in the Galati-Braila region, drastically reducing crossing times for approximately 7,000 vehicles that have been using a ferry service every day.

The last two years have seen complex – and at times visually spectacular – work. At the beginning of the first year, workers raised and set in place the bridge’s two supporting cables, which were created by the intertwining of more than 18,000 steel fibres (more than 9,000 for each cable). Their combined weight is 6,775 tonnes. Last summer, there was the raising of the bridge’s steel deck, one of the most challenging phases of the construction of the bridge. More than 250 workers and technicians were involved in installing 86 sections of the deck, each weighing 260 tonnes. They developed a specific method to raise and set each one. 

Webuild’s track record includes the construction of more than 1,000 kilometres of bridges and viaducts, equivalent to the distance between Paris and Berlin. Among them some of the most challenging projects that have come to represent the Group’s innovative approach to construction, including the Genoa San Giorgio Bridge in Italy, which was completed in a little more than a year, as well as the Third Bridge over the Bosphorus in Turkey.