Load Test for World’s Highest Bridge Is Complete in Guizhou, China

China says it has completed a load test involving dozens of trucks on the world’s highest bridge, a steel suspension structure in Guizhou province.

The five-day testing was completed on Aug. 25, with details of the project made available to media.

A testing team drove 96 trucks to designated places on the bridge, the BBC reports.

Lei Min, load test director, told China-based CCTV that “we simulate extreme conditions with 3,360 tons of load to activate the maximum capacity of the bridge structure under normal use.”

Scheduled to open in September, the bridge is in Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture.

The bridge deck is 2,083 ft above a river, which the BBC said will “set a record for both the world’s highest bridge and largest span above a mountainous area.”

According to a primer on bridge load testing published by the Transportation Research Board in 2019, bridge load testing goes back throughout history. Load tests have also been part of bridge inspection procedures going back to 1891.

According to the primer’s introduction, “in times when engineering models were not as accurate and available as today, a critical step in the construction of a bridge was to load test prior to opening or during the opening ceremony.”

“Performing the load test and measuring deflections demonstrated to the
public that the bridge was safe,” the primer notes. Several bridges, such as a steel framework bridge over the Morava River near Ljubitschewo, Serbia, a road bridge near Salez, Switzerland and a suspension bridge in Maurin, France, collapsed during such load tests.

Deputy Editor Richard Korman helps run ENR’s business and legal news and investigations, selects ENR’s commentary and oversees editorial content on ENR.com. In 2023 the American Society of Business Publication Editors awarded Richard the Stephen Barr Award, the highest honor for a single feature story or investigation, for his story on the aftermath of a terrible auto crash in Kentucky in 2019, and in 2015 the American Business Media awarded him the Timothy White Award for investigations of surety fraud and workplace bullying. A member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Richard has been a fellow on drone safety with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Richard’s freelance writing has appeared in the Seattle Times, the New York Times, Business Week and the websites of The Atlantic and Salon.com. He admires construction projects that finish on time and budget, compensate all team members fairly and record zero fatalities or serious injuries.