Chinanews, Changsha, December 13 – The first modern bamboo bridge in the World was completed in Leiyang, Hunan Province on December 12, and an 8.6-ton-heavy-duty truck was the first vehicle to cross it.

 

The bridge is 10 m long and 3.4 m wide. It is designed to allow vehicles as heavy as 8 tons to travel on it, and it can endure the static pressure of 90 tons. The bridge will last for 20 years.

 

It took the School of Civil Engineering of Hunan University nearly a whole year to improve the intensity of the bamboo structures to build the bridge. The researchers put carbon-fiber into plastics to make complex building materials with bamboos, so as to guarantee the intensity of the bridge.

 

Building a bamboo bridge will cost much less time than building a concrete one, moreover, there is hardly any pollution during the building process. The expenditure for building such a bridge is also much lower than building a steel bridge.

 

The researchers are now working hard to build longer bamboo bridges, hoping that one day all the overpasses in Chinese cities can be replaced with bamboo ones.