Millau Viaduct videos
The Millau Viaduct consists of an eight-span steel roadway supported by seven concrete piers. The roadway weighs 36,000 tons and is 2,460 m long, measuring 32 m wide by 4.2 m deep. The six central spans each measure 342 m with the two outer spans measuring 204 m. The roadway has a slope of 3% descending from south to north, and curves in plan section on a 20 km radius to give drivers better visibility. It carries two lanes of traffic in each direction.
The piers range in height from 77–246 m, and taper in their longitudinal section from 24.5 m at the base to 11 m at the deck. Each pier is composed of 16 framework sections, each weighing 2,230 tons. These sections were assembled on site from pieces of 60 tons, 4 m wide and 17 m long, made in factories in Lauterbourg and Fos-sur-Mer by Eiffage. The piers each support 97 m tall pylons. The piers were assembled first, together with some temporary supports, before the decks were slid out across the piers by satellite-guided hydraulic rams that moved the deck 600 mm every 4 minutes.
The viaduct is nearly twice as tall as the previous tallest vehicular bridge in Europe, the Europabrücke in Austria.
The Millau Viaduct is the highest vehicular bridge measured from the roadway elevation. Its deck, about 270 m above the Tarn, is slightly higher than the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia in the United States, which is 267 m above the New River. The Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado, United States has a deck considerably higher than either, at 321 m above the Arkansas River.
[Source: Wikipedia]
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