The Hong Kong Zhuhai Macau Bridge (HZMB) is the completed “missing” link (see Fig. 2 below) in a Ring Road concept for the development of the Pearl Delta Region (Fig. 1). The HZMB is connecting Hong Kong with the southern part of Mainland China, Guangdong (formerly Canton), to the Cities of Zhuhai/Macau, Zhongshan, Dongguan and Shenzhen. The road will integrate the powerful industrial region of southern China (Guangdong) with the transport and trading hub of Hong Kong. Its total population counts around 105, 000, 000.00 people.
The construction of the bridge with a length of approximately 40 km, crossing the waters of the South China Sea, resulted in major challenges, particularly in the foundations. The construction of the bridge was spilt into two packages, the package on the territory of Main Land China and the package on Hong Kong territory. The Dragages-China Harbour–VSL Joint Venture (JV) was awarded to design + build the Bridge between PRC Border and Hong Kong. Save some land based piles the JV split the Bored Pile Foundation fundamentally into two areas, the shallow water and the deep water area. The following paper reports about the Bored Pile Construction for the bridge in the deep water area where piles turned out to be in excess of 110 m depth. The JV selected the Rotary Kelly Drilling (RKD) Bored-Pile Method offered by Bauer Hong Kong for these difficult piles. It is probably the first time in construction history in the world that the RKD Technique was used in such a big scale for a Mega Offshore Structure and was given the preference over the Reversed Circulation Drilling (RCD) Method.
Author: Thomas Domanski