HYDERABAD:After facing several hurdles and space constraints, LTMRHL has successfully completed the crucial Lakdikapul Metro Rail Over Bridge (ROB), thus bridging the only remaining gap of Corridor-I between Ameerpet and LB Nagar, HMRL Managing Director NVS Reddy said.
Inspecting the ROB works on Sunday at Lakdikapul, he said the tracks of India Railways are in a deep cutting (about 26 ft) below the road level and no space was available for laying foundations and Metro Rail pillars on both sides of the railway track due to presence of busy road on one side and MMTS station, RR district collectorate building and a private hospital on the other side.Further, Indian Railways has put a condition that the foundation depth of the Metro Rail pillars on both sides of the track should be at least 10 feet below the Indian Railway track’s level for future expansion of their tracks.
The area has hard granite rock and to cut the hard granite rock to a depth of 43 feet posed a serious challenge for the Metro Rail engineers. Since the foundations had to be laid adjacent to busy road with heavy traffic, the deeply dug up pits had to be secured with special shoring and shuttering mechanism consisting of heavy steel beams with extra protection so that the road would not cave in at any point of time during the construction of the Metro pillars on both sides of the railway track.
Another important engineering challenge was to design a special type of integrated Metro pillar and the viaduct above as a single monolithic structure unlike all other bridge pillars which have bearings to take care of and transfer different kinds of forces. Normally any bridge pillar will have bearings to accommodate and take care of vertical and horizontal forces and to design and construct a bridge pillar without bearings is an engineering nightmare, averred several bridge experts. As this kind of monolithic bridge pillar without bearings was being done for the first time in the country, Indian railways and it’s structural engineering consultants RITES repeatedly checked the design and imposed many tough conditions which were successfully met by the L&T design engineers.
Tackling all the engineering challenges, the 392-feet long Lakdikipul ROB was successfully completed by using specially fabricated ‘Bridge Builder’ as it was done in case of Begumpet Metro ROB, NVS Reddy said.