On November 14, the double-width Donggou Grand Bridge on the Ledu-Hualong section expressway of the G213 Ceke-Mohan Highway was successfully completed and connected.

The Donggou Grand Bridge is the largest-span steel plate composite girder structure currently under construction in Qinghai Province, with a total length of 1,268 meters. Its main girder adopts a double I-shaped steel plate composite girder, with a maximum span of 60 meters.

To build a quality project, the project team went beyond the site during construction, benchmarking against advanced domestic projects and conducting online and offline exchanges with domestic bridge experts. They planned ahead in terms of construction techniques, innovation and efficiency, quality and safety, and technical economy, and innovatively adopted China's first "320-ton + 132-meter self-balancing bridge launching machine" for bridge erection. This solved technical challenges such as one-pass welding of 10-centimeter-thick steel plates and high-precision, safe, and rapid erection of 60-meter-span steel girders weighing more than 230 tons, as well as construction difficulties involving large spans and steep longitudinal slopes, ensuring installation precision was strictly controlled within 3 millimeters. This accumulated experience for similar bridge construction in the future and provided technical support for the bridge's completion on schedule.

Feng Jiaqing, chief engineer of the Second Sub-division of the Second Project Management Department of the Lehua Project of CCCC First Highway Engineering Group Co., Ltd., introduced that the 60-meter-span steel plate composite girder of the Donggou Grand Bridge is the first of its kind in Qinghai Province. The heaviest steel plate composite girder weighs 237 tons and was erected using China's first 132-meter self-balancing bridge launching machine. The high-altitude operation carried high safety risks, and the steel plate composite girder construction involved many procedures, high precision, and great technical difficulty, making it a key and difficult project along the entire line. The smooth completion of the bridge laid a solid foundation for the on-time opening of the Lehua Expressway.

The Ledu-Hualong section highway project is located in Ledu District and Hualong County of Haidong City, Qinghai Province. It is part of the planned G213 national highway and an important component of the "three vertical" lines in the "three vertical and three horizontal" external comprehensive transportation corridors of the Qinghai eastern urban agglomeration. The project route has a total length of 53.594 kilometers. Its starting point connects with the G6 Beijing-Tibet Expressway; in the long term, it will connect northward with the S204 Zhanian Highway and the G341 Jiaxi Highway, and southward with the Yatong Expressway and the G310 Jiangong Expressway, forming a corridor from eastern Qinghai to other provinces. It is expected to be completed and opened to traffic in September 2024. Once completed, the project will help form a regional expressway network and is of great significance for promoting interconnection among Ledu, Hualong, Minhe, Xunhua and other counties and districts in Haidong City, improving traffic conditions in areas along the route, enhancing radiation capacity, and promoting local tourism development such as at Qutan Temple.