Wang Rengui, an engineer who has devoted his whole life to the bridge industry and solved numerous bridge construction problems, will continue to weave his rainbow dream.
Chinese have always showed extraordinary wisdom in building bridges. Contemporarily, with the development of science and technology, the level of bridge building in China has been the world’s leading rank. Countless records were created by modern Chinese bridge engineers.
Wang Rengui was born in a poor family in Jiangsu Province, in which did not bring him a rich life, but cultivated his spirit of hard work.He was a smart student, entering the Southeast University's road engineering major with the second highest score in the grade. Besides, he has maintained the first grade in the university during the four years. At the time when other students were focusing on road construction, Wang Rengui became interested in bridge structural engineering. With the keen sense of future, he realized that rather than roads, bridges are more important and urgent to the country’s economic development. Finally he made up his mind to do some research on bridges.
After graduating from college, Wang Rengui was elected to the Highway Design Institute of the Ministry of Transportation because of his excellent performance in the college. In his view, every bridge should be different. They should have their own characteristics, including innovations in structure or craftsmanship. That is to say, bridges are not changeless, and they need to be innovated constantly.
During his career, the first bridge Wang Rengui participated in designing wasHuangshi Bridge, which was also the first bridge built by Chinese transportation system on Yangtze River. Wang Rengui is innovative and willing to learn computer technology that was just new in China. In the project, he used the Fortran77 language to compile some practical software that greatly improved the work efficiency, then applied computer graphics to the engineering design. It is in this project that the highway design institute realized the full use of computer graphics in bridge structure design for the first time.
The 36-kilometer Hangzhou Bay Sea Cross Bridge, the world’s fourth longest sea-cross bridge, is also one of the most difficult bridges to be built in the world.The chief designer of this bridge is Wang Rengui. However, numerous difficulties have hindered this project. In addition to the difficulty in selecting the site, the Hangzhou Bay Sea Cross Bridge also was faced a series problems, such as complex meteorological conditions, harsh hydrological conditions, large scale and difficult management. At that time, the Chinese government doubted that whether the Chinese can build this bridge on their own.
Does the bridge have any impact on Qiantang Bore? What is the impact on the long-term development of the ports in the Hangzhou Bay? Is it technically mature to build bridges in such dangerous and complex sea area?— Facing three questions raised by Premier Zhu Rongji, Wang Rengui made three reports to the National Development and Reform Commission to answer those questions.
He believed that based on science, technology and independent innovation, we Chinese will surely overcome the difficulties in bridge construction. And finally he did it. Since the start of the bridge construction, more than 250 technological innovations have been obtained.The independent innovation, represented by the nine series of core technologies, has overcome the technical problems of building a cross-sea bridge in a strong tidal bay, and its results have reached the international leading level.