 Since its foundation, Ponte di Archimede International S.p.A. has been working towards the development and project of a submerged floating tunnel called Archimede's Bridge.
The Archimede's Bridge is an innovative concept: an environmentally-friendly crossing, exploiting the principles of hydrostatic thrust and based on a calculation first developed by Archimedes, the scientist genius from Syracuse, in the third century BC.
With this highly advanced type of construction, it is possible to design shore-to-shore links across straits, lakes or rivers, in places where such projects had hitherto been ruled out on economic and technical grounds.
The typology of the Archimede's Bridge overturns the traditional engineering approach to the problem of a fixed crossing in that it considers the mirror of water that has to be overcome not as an obstacle but an element to be used in its favour. To make this happen, a stable submerged link has been designed whose fundamental requisites are:
- a high level of structural performance without regard for length
- invulnerability to atmospheric factors
- a high level of performance when facing seismic effects
- competitive construction costs
The study of the Submerged Floating Tunnel concept, called the Archimede’s Bridge, based on an innovative typology for fixed links across straits and lakes, was investigated in the first phase in collaboration with the Norwegian Roads Research Laboratory, the Danish Road Institute and the Italian Shipping Register, with a financial grant from the European Union and the coordination of FEHRL (Forum European Highways Research Laboratories) an International Association of 22 Public Road Administrations. A Sino-Italian Joint Laboratory of Archimede’s Bridge (SIJLAB) has been originated in 1998 between Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China and Ponte di Archimede International. One of the main tasks of the project is to develop a 100m tunnel in the Qiando Lake, China.
The Chinese partners of Ponte di Archimede International S.p.A. are the following Institutes:
- Zhejiang Provincial Science and Technology Commission
- Zhoushan Island Connection System Construction Organization
- Zhejiang Design Institute of Transportation Engineering
- Zhejiang University
- Tongji University of Shanghai
A more recent partner of Ponte di Archimede International S.p.A. is the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
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