Planned İzmit bridge tested in wind tunnel

MILAN - Anatolia News Agency

Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım poses with a mock-up of Turkey’s to-be-built İzmit bay bridge. The center span of the brige is planned to be 1,700 meters long.

Experts at Italy’s Politecnico di Milano University staged a wind-tunnel test May 26 for a prospective bridge crossing over İzmit Bay as part of the Gebze-Orhangazi-İzmir Highway build-operate-transfer project.

Transportation, Maritime and Communications Minister Binali Yıldırım watched the test and said the bridge was not affected by strong winds of up to 230 km/h.

A wind tunnel is a tool used in aerodynamic research to study the effects of air moving past solid objects.
The Gebze-Orhangazi-Izmir Highway Project will reduce the land transport time between Istanbul and İzmir to 3.5 hours.

The İzmit Bay Bridge is a planned suspension bridge located on the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara, close to İzmit and approximately 50 kilometers from Istanbul. It will be one of the longest suspension bridges in the world in terms of the length of its central span.

The construction and operation of the bridge was awarded to a joint venture of five Turkish construction companies (Nurol, Özaltın, Makyol, Yüksel, Göçay) and one Italian construction firm (Astaldi) following a tender in April 2009.

A contract for the project, which is expected to cost $11 billion, was signed in 2010.