| Popis: |
The Colville River originates in the remote western Brooks Mountain Range in Alaska's Arctic and empties into the Beaufort Sea, a marginal water body of the Arctic Ocean. The river, which is frozen for more than six months each year and floods in spring, is approximately 560 kilometers long and is one of the northernmost major rivers in North America. The river separates the established oil and gas fields of Alaska's North Slope from the previously undeveloped National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska (NPR-A) to the west. A key component of required infrastructure to accommodate development of the resources was a series of four bridges across distributaries of the Colville River that provided access between the Alpine Field and NPR-A. The longest of the four bridges was a 430-meter structure across the Nigliq Channel, the largest distributary of the Colville River. This paper describes the significant design and construction challenges that had to be overcome to successfully complete the Nigliq Channel Bridge. |
