Millau Viaduct

The Millau Viaduct is a massive bridge that is located in southern France.  It is well known for the fact that it is the tallest bridge in the world right now (in terms of top of bridge to bottom of bridge) and twentieth in bridge height (distance between road deck and lowest point on the ground.  It was finished in 2004 and is one of the great engineering accomplishments of the twenty first century.  It is recognized as such an impressive accomplishment in the engineering milieu because of its great structural design and stunning look. 

Since the bridge was a huge project that cost hundred of millions of Euros, the french ministry of public works hired five different contractors to construct the entire bridge.  These contractors all worked together in making the bridge come together.  one of the biggest parts of construction for them were the pylons.  Some of the pylons were up to 343 meters tall which is taller than the eiffel tower.  These pylons were made by first making four shafts each around 15 meters deep to keep the pylon sturdy.  Then, treads were put around the pylon to reinforce the strength of the pylon.  However, the pylons themselves were absolutely huge and building something that large out of concrete would have taken an incredible amount of time.  Therefore, the engineers in charge of the construction decided to use the technique called climbing formwork to build the pylons.  This allowed them to add four meters of height to the pylons everyday and also made the pylons seamless.

The road deck was started at one end of the bridge and sort of rolled onto the pylons.  Since the bridge was so huge, temporary pylons had to created to help create the bridge to help the weight control and assembly of the road deck.  On top of the road deck on the pylon is a type of suspension cable.  The Millau Viaduct uses high strength steel cables to hold up the road deck.  This suspension part of the bridge is connected to the main pylons that hold up all of the weight of the bridge.  The Millau Viaduct proved to be an incredibly huge engineering project that required many different types of engineers to create and make.  Everything from the pylons to the cables had to be perfect for something of this size and price to work and be worthwhile.