Rusal's top manager: Almost every aluminum bridge in Russia is unique

Over the past few years, about thirty bridges made of aluminum, a material that until recently was considered exotic in infrastructure projects, have appeared in Russia. The new bridge assembled in St. Petersburg for the Altai region was an impressive technological experiment. Why aluminum may become an important structural material of the near future, how Russian bridges were in demand in Germany and what does the Ministry of Emergency Situations have to do with it - in an interview with “Lenta.ru” told the Director of Market Development at Rusal Evgeny Vasiliev.

- Why for the construction of the bridge in the Altai region was it decided to assemble the structure at the plant in St. Petersburg and its subsequent transportation at a distance of almost five thousand kilometers? What are the advantages of this approach?

Evgeny Vasiliev: This is just the general advantage of aluminum solutions for construction - bridges, facades, building modules, helicopter landing sites. They are assembled in factories as much as possible, and they are only assembled at the site. For example, at the Aluminum Structures Plant “SGR” the bridge will be disassembled into large blocks like a constructor and sent by several trucks to Siberia, and in Altai Krai it will only be left to install it - it will take literally a couple of weeks.

The innovation of this bridge will be the use of aluminum support beams of large cross-section - 400 by 150 millimeters, the beams will be welded. All this required non-standard design and engineering solutions, especially considering that aluminum welding is relatively undeveloped in Russia.

Rusal itself is even thinking about creating such a center, although we are primarily producers of primary aluminum and semi-finished products, and our metal buyers do the welding. Another design achievement is the significantly reduced metal intensity while meeting the highest safety requirements: the 50-meter-long bridge weighs only 21 tons. This seriously reduces the cost of the project, as it is almost directly related to the amount of aluminum used. For a government order, this is an important factor.

The full interview with Evgeny Vasiliev (in Russian)

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