UST: News

Intermediate supports are necessary for fixing SkyWay rail-string structure of cargo overpass in between the adjacent anchor supports. They are designed to bear only vertical load (own weight and rolling stock weight) and transverse load (side wind effect).

The basic diagram of cargo SkyWay overpass implies that main loads from the superstructure and rolling stock are transferred to anchor supports, which allows to design an intermediate support as lightweight, cost-effective and convenient for assembling without loss of strength. The support can be carried out in the form of metallic structures and reinforced concrete constructions - both assembled and monolithic (solid-cast).

SkyWay cargo complex anchor supports can have a double-purpose design - they can be combined with the load-bearing frame of different building structures - loading and unloading terminals, manufacturing workshops, maintenance stations, etc. These can be, for example, depots and premises for processing equipment, as well as reversal track sections and other structures, which provide operability for transport and infrastructure complex SkyWay on the whole.

Supports in traditional transport overpasses are extremely massive and expensive as they endure high vertical and horizontal forces and operate under adverse conditions from the point of view of building mechanics.

Considering that cargo SkyWay supports have no analogues in conventional transport overpasses, let us take an ordinary (one of thousand) overpass support of high-speed railway, built by the Japanese in Taiwan about 10 years ago, as a prototype for comparison. Supports of this overpass endure such enormous loads that under each support in the ground, there are installed four bored and cast-in-place piles with diameter of 2 m (!) and length of up to 60 m (!). The weight of pile foundation alone for such an ordinary support can reach 1,800 tons. For reference: the weight of reinforced concrete foundation for an end anchor support in cargo SkyWay does not exceed 100 tons. Therefore, an ordinary support of the track, built under "advanced Japanese technologies" cannot cost less than 1 million USD. Here, it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that any SkyWay track will have only 2 terminal anchor supports, while the number of supports for the overpass built under Japanese technologies (where supports are installed in every 35 m), for a cargo track with the length of, for example, 350 km, would be 10,000 pieces.

Despite high cost of the overpass used in a traditional railway, its performance will not be higher (in fact, even lower) than that of SkyWay.

Due to uncut nature of the superstructure in SkyWay track structure (it has no temperature joints), the load-bearing capacity of supports, all other conditions being equal, is increased by about 8 times. The reason is that the support is not cantilever - its top is fixed to the track. Therefore, intermediate support material consumption and their cost are reduced as compared to, for example, traditional transport overpasses by an order of magnitude. When carrying out all strength requirements, a steel-reinforced concrete support will be the most cost-effective, durable and easy to manufacture.