A colossal bridge in China is the world’s longest and is designed to withstand typhoons and powerful earthquakes.
The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge was constructed between 2006 and 2010, and officially launched in June 2011.
That month, it gained the Guinness World Record for being the longest in the world. But despite the vast scale of the 102.4-mile long structure, it took just four years to build.
The landmark piece of infrastructure is located in Jiangsu province in eastern China and connects Shanghai to Nanjing, the capital of the country’s eastern Jiangsu province.
Running roughly parallel with the Yangtze River, the cable-stayed bridge passes through areas of uneven terrain, zooming over canals, lakes and lowland rice paddies.
A 5.6-mile-long stretch of the bridge even takes commuters over the open waters of the Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou, held up by 2,000 pillars and steel cables.
The viaduct has two main sections: the 32.5-mile-long Danyang section and the Kunshan section, which is almost 70 miles long.
Perhaps most impressively of all, it was constructed with potential threats from mishaps and natural phenomena in mind.
According to mechanical-engineering.com, the bridge was designed to withstand typhoons, magnitude-8 earthquakes and even a direct hit from a 300,000-ton naval vessel.
The structure, which is expected to have a lifespan of 100 years, was also built to allow space for ships to pass underneath it in certain sections, and it has a clearance of 150 meters.
Some 10,000 workers were involved in its construction, with the project costing around £6.9 billion in total.
It’s part of the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway, providing quick travel between the two areas, but the bridge can also be used by cars and commercial vehicles in some areas.
It was designed to alleviate traffic in the province, which is home to around 80 million people, and is said to have cut the travel time between Shanghai and Nanjing from approximately four hours to just over one hour.
The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge was built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation – a Chinese state-owned construction and engineering firm.