The Francis Scott Key Bridge, the second longest continuous truss bridge in the U.S., crosses the lower Patapsco River and the outer harbor of Baltimore, Maryland. In recent months, a new overhead power line system was built to run parallel to the bridge’s steel structure. The project involved the construction of five transmission towers and two dolphins in the water, crossing the two-mile wide river.
Covering the concrete foundation of the towers and dolphins to protect them from potential watertraffic collisions, SFT designed and delivered 385 UHMW-PE Sliding Plates with most of these pieces being unique—customized sizes and different bolt layouts to fit each of the towers and dolphins concrete substructure.
The total tonnage of the supplied UHMW-PE amounts to 174 tons, a weight similar to the Lincoln statue in at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Nor was that the only massive number—the SFT in-house engineering team worked to a great amount of detail to deliver a solution that, when considered in total, is the size of 6.5 NBA basketball courts.
Additionally, the manufacturing took place in Germany, and to meet the client’s corporate identity requirements all plates were produced in a special gray color.
It was a complex project, where customization was the standard and also a prestigious one. The Baltimore project was an example of our holistic approach that puts not only components and manufacturing but also project conditions in the center and focuses on the uniqueness of each project to deliver the appropriate fender solution.
Reprinted from Marine Construction Magazine Issue IV, 2023
