In recent days, the Ukrainian public and media have shown increased interest in the Y.E. Paton Bridge – after our Academy published alarming data about the pace of its degradation and its current emergency technical condition. We consider it our duty to continue this discussion and inform Ukrainians that the situation is not hopeless and experts know how to repair the bridge so that it will serve our capital for many more decades. For your attention – an article by the General Director of the Ukrainian Institute of Steel Structures named after V.M. Shimanovsky (let us remind you that this institution once designed the bridge), corresponding member of the NAS of Ukraine Oleksandr Shymanovsky, in which he shares the latest information about the technical condition of the bridge and detailed recommendations on how exactly this structure should be reconstructed and what should be done first.
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What is the Y.E. Paton Bridge like?
The Y.E. Paton Bridge is a metal all-welded bridge over the Dnipro River in Kyiv, connecting Mykola Mikhnovsky Boulevard with the Rusanivsky and Berezniaky residential areas (Fig. 1). The bridge, commissioned in 1953, became the world’s first all-welded bridge, embodying the ideas and developments of the outstanding Ukrainian scientist in the field of bridge construction and welding processes, author of the then-new technology of automatic submerged arc welding, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR Yevhen Oskarovych Paton. The bridge was designed under the general supervision of Y.E. Paton and with the participation of engineers Volodymyr Trufyakov, Vyacheslav Shevernitsky, Volodymyr Novikov, Heorhiy Zhemchuzhnikov, and Sofiya Ostrovska. The project was carried out at the "Ukrinstalkon named after V.M. Shimanovsky" institute (then called the Kyiv Separate Design Bureau "Proektstalkonstruktsiya") with the involvement of engineers Oleh Shumytsky, Volodymyr Kiryeyenko, and Ivan Marakin.
Fig. 1. Y.E. Paton Bridge in Kyiv
All metal structures of the bridge were manufactured at the Dnipropetrovsk Metal Structures Plant named after I.V. Babushkin, delivered by rail to Kyiv, and assembled by welding directly at the construction site. At the same time, automatic and semi-automatic welding machines welded 97% of the seams, and during assembly, for the first time in the world, the method of welding with forced formation of vertical assembly seams was successfully applied.
The total length of the bridge is 1543.0 m (Fig. 2). The width of the roadway between curbs is 21.0 m, and the sidewalks for pedestrians are 3.0 m. The bridge was designed according to the 1948 standards to carry four columns of motor vehicles, each 3.375 m wide (excluding safety lanes), and two tram lanes (currently the tram tracks have been dismantled) with a total tramway width of 7.5 m (Fig. 3).