Daqin Fusu: It is difficult to start the battle

Chapter 321 Building a Bridge
Xianyang City, beside the Bashui River.

Meng Tian sat under the pergola, holding a cup of herbal tea in his hand and slowly sipping.

In front of him is the Bashui Bridge project, which has been planned for a long time and has finally started.

Sitting next to Meng Tian under the arbor are the 'contractor' who will be the official transporter of the Shaofu, and the son of the Shaofu, Yan, who is in charge of collecting money...

As for Meng Tian himself, the work of repairing bridges and paving roads was originally the responsibility of the eunuch.

He drank the tea in his cup in one breath, thinking that he must be the busiest one among the three princes and nine ministers!
Two days ago, he was still inspecting the Muyuan in Yong County, but today he hurried to the Baqiao construction site.

After all, as a servant, he is not only the emperor's driver, but also over 60 official horse farms in the entire Qin Kingdom, which are also under his control.

There are 30 herders and nearly [-] horses.

Well, when necessary, these [-] shepherds can be trained to become [-] light cavalry...

"Such a method of building a bridge is really unheard of!" Gong Ziyan looked at the extremely detailed three-view view with an expression of amazement on his face.

Gong Shugui on the side pouted, but finally said nothing.

Meng Tian nodded in agreement and said, "Yes, people are carried in a boat, and a few wooden stakes are laid in the river to form a lake in the river..."

He glanced at the drawings on the table, and then said: "This is called the cofferdam method. Fill the area surrounded by wooden piles with soil, and then drain the internal water. It only takes more than a month. In the past, it took half a year to repair it." Bad piers are built!"

Gong Ziyan frowned slightly, and read a line of small characters at the bottom of the drawing: "It's a pity that Xianyang City is not close to the sea. Otherwise, oysters are cultivated on the bridge piers. If there is a gap, the bridge will have the ability to repair itself, which is impossible..."

Gong Shugui suddenly stood up, walked to the table, and whispered, "Who is this? Why did you bring His Majesty's first draft here..."

While they were talking, the first cofferdam on the Bashui River was finally built, and a row of pontoons carrying a wooden wheel that looked like a hamster wheel slowly approached the cofferdam.

On the other side, a pile driver mounted on a boat, more than ten meters above the water surface, went downstream from the edge of the cofferdam.

In fact, this thing is an artifact to improve the efficiency of the cofferdam in the early stage.

Although the rope is also pulled by manpower, the rocks are pulled upwards, and then the wooden pile is smashed into the bottom of the river with the help of gravity, but compared with people holding a hammer and smashing 88 ten times, the efficiency is at least a hundred times higher!
After the pile driver left, the wooden wheel finally approached the cofferdam, and hundreds of strong men in short shirts and bare feet began to assemble in an orderly manner.

If you look carefully, you will find that these strong men all wear new-style scorpions on their heads, which means that they are all engineers with titles.

And what they assembled together was the waterwheel used to pump water.

The water flow drives the wooden wheel to rotate, and the transmission shaft drives the gear extending into the cofferdam to rotate. The conveyor belt that is engaged with the gear and is perpendicular to the water surface and full of buckets also rotates accordingly, thereby pumping out the accumulated water in the cofferdam.

After the accumulated water is pumped out, the waterwheel will be dismantled, and the work will continue to the next cofferdam, and the work here will enter a purely manual process.

The "migrant workers" recruited from various counties in the history, most of whom are above the rank of duke, will enter the cofferdam and dig out the silt until they see a solid ground.

After that, the bridge piers were built with cement mixed with bricks.

The bridges built later are still masonry structures, arched bridges bonded with cement.

Well, don't even think about a bridge with a reinforced concrete structure.

This is not because there are not so many steel bars. In fact, with the completion of the Yiyang Iron and Steel Plant, at least at the current stage, there is no shortage of steel in Guanzhong and Sanchuan County.

But the arched structure is actually a very perfect structure.

The reason why the arch bridge is called an arch bridge is that the geometric structure of the arch is exchanged for the characteristics of full-section compression. The purpose of the arch is to reduce the local tension effect caused by the live load and to construct a reasonable arch axis.

Moreover, due to the pressure bearing capacity of masonry, no steel bars are needed at all, even the masonry arch bridges built in later generations do not need steel bars for reinforcement.

Well, in fact, many reinforced concrete arch bridges are continuous girder bridges with variable cross-sections, which are equivalent to beams with square cross-sections, and then a piece is deducted in the middle to save materials. The design concept itself is completely different from that of arch bridges.

It looks like an arch bridge, but it is actually a beam bridge...

One point that arch bridges do not need steel bars is that a reasonable arch axis will not generate bending moments, and steel bars are mainly used to resist bending moments.

As for the other reason, it is that in the current state of Qin, there are no heavy trucks with a load capacity of more than [-] tons...

The load of a four-wheeled carriage is not enough to crush a stone arch bridge.

Multi-point construction, unified coordination.

Fusu's plan is to use the slack time after the autumn sowing to repair the Bashui Bridge, and then let this group of experienced engineers go to various places to repair bridges, clearing the way for the Great Qin on wheels.

Of course, the Yangtze River Bridge that makes Tianzhu a thoroughfare still needs to wait, after all, the river is too wide... The engineers need to upgrade one more level to handle the boss of the penultimate level.

As for the final big boss, of course it is the bridge across the sea!
Well, the Living Years series...

When the sound of the chant was heard in the arbor, Gong Ziyan stared at the two horizontal lines drawn on the blueprint in a daze.

"This seems to be at odds with etiquette?"

What he was talking about was the double yellow lines drawn on the bridge surface, which were designed to avoid head-on collisions of vehicles traveling in the opposite direction. It is said that since the yellow lines in the middle of the road were introduced in later generations, the traffic accident rate has decreased. Many, so it was quickly popularized on a large scale.

Although Daqin's vehicles are all horse-drawn carriages, and the speed is not fast, the probability of accidents is relatively low, but the etiquette that Gong Ziyan said is not in harmony is not the case.

What he means is, if the bridge is just divided in two, which way should the emperor take when traveling?

And for a minister like him, which way should he go when he travels?
Is it possible to let them go side by side with Qianshou?

That's right... Meng Tian also just found out that he looked at Gong Shugui with the same puzzled eyes.

After all, this is something that 'Party B' should consider.

Gongzhugui said with a smile: "Bashui Bridge is a two-way bridge with six lanes, and the innermost lane is reserved for high-ranking officials above a thousand stones, or high-ranking officials above five doctors."

"The lane in the middle is reserved for officials with more than [-] shi and less than [-] shi, or those whose rank is higher than that of a doctor than a doctor."

"As for the outermost side, and the sidewalks on both sides, it's for the little officials fighting food, the nobles, and the heads of Guizhou."

"Everyone goes his own way, there are trespassers punished by Qin law!"

As for how the emperor will go...

Well, when the emperor travels, there will be no unrelated people on the bridge except the guards.

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(End of this chapter)