The Millau Viaduct – The tallest bridge in the world

As we continue with a new set of blogs from Reddy Kancharla, in this entry he features another engineering marvel, the Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world.

The Millau Viaduct has the distinction of being the highest road bridge in the world, measuring 343 meters high. It was opened on 8am on 14th December 2004, and it has served so many individuals travelling in their vehicles over the years. Only two months after it was opened, it had already welcomed its millionth vehicle.

The bridge actually replaced a dangerous winding route across the river valley between Clermont-Ferrand and Montpellier. This area has been quite infamous for recording fatalities every year due to crashes, with lorries falling onto the roofs of vehicles stuck behind slow moving farm vehicles.

Construction began in late 2001 on this extraordinary structure which has 17 arches that are 70 m high, incorporating cable stays that are 765m long. Each of these cables is anchored into five tons of concrete, which together weigh 100,000 tons. The cable stays support a deck of 25,000 sqm which is an amount of concrete that you can hardly find anywhere else.

The ambition in the construction of the Millau Viaduct was to create a tall bridge with the least amount of material, in order to make it appear as transparent and as delicate as possible. Many civil engineers all over the world are truly amazed that the Millau Viaduct has achieved exactly that.

The Millau Bridge was designed by British architect Lord Norman Foster and French structural engineer Michel Virlogeux, who also worked together on London's "Gherkin" skyscraper.

Reddy Kancharla shares his knowledge about civil engineering through his very enriching blogs. For more engineering marvels, please visit this page.