STEEL + TECHNOLOGY 01/2019

70 | STEEL PROCESSING
Dutch Steel Award 2018
Award-winning steel-built railway bridge in
the Netherlands
The longest railway bridge in the Netherlands has been recognized for its innovative and efficient design,
enabled by the use of thermomechanically rolled steel.
I
n the course of a large-scale extension
of the A1 motorway east of Amsterdam,
it had become necessary to replace
the Muiderberg railway bridge, a
concrete railway viaduct. The impressive
new bridge, a steel construction, was
completed in 2016. Now the bridge has
been honoured with the Dutch Steel
Award 2018 in the infrastructure category.
The project was challenging in various
respects: for example, the bridge was to
span the motorway without intermediate
supports but yet should be of streamlined
and light design, and the prefabricated parts
were to be easy to assemble on site.
Weight savings through S460M/
ML-grade thermomechanically
rolled steel
The Muiderberg railway bridge in the Netherlands (Photo: Vliegveld Hilversum)
Project data of the railway bridge
Location: A1 motorway, Muiderberg, Netherlands
Contracting authority: Rijkswaterstaat/ProRail, Amsterdam/Utrecht
Architects: ZJA Zwarts & Jansma Architects, Amsterdam
Design: Iv-Infra, Haarlem
Implementation: SAAone
Steel construction: Victor Buyck, Eeklo, Belgium
www.nationalestaalprijs.nl
Spanning 255 m, the 17 m wide and
55 m high “Zandhazenbrug”, as the Dutch
call it, is the longest railway bridge in the
Netherlands and one of the largest arched
bridges in Europe. Dillinger supplied 8,200
t of the total 8,400 t of steel from which
the bridge is built, about 7,000 t of which
S460M/ML-grade thermomechanically rolled
steel.
Using heavy plate of this grade enabled
the weight to be reduced by almost 30%,
while achieving the set goals in terms of
ease of transport and assembly, and free
spanning length. Thanks to the choice of
the steel also the use of raw material and
the total welding effort could be reduced,
having a positive effect on the overall energy
consumption.
These and other efficiency, innovation
and design-related aspects, along with the
architectural performance, have now been
honoured with the Dutch Steel Award. The
Muiderberg railway bridge joins the list of
award-winning projects for which Dillinger
supplied steel: for example, the exhibition
halls and multi-storey car park of the Stuttgart
trade fair centre, in France the Gustave
Flaubert lift bridge in Rouen, the Simone de
Beauvoir pedestrian bridge in Paris and the
Pierre Mauroy Stade in Lille, and last but not
least the Lochkov Valley Bridge near Prague.
• AG der Dillinger Hüttenwerke
STEEL + TECHNOLOGY 1 (2019) First Issue