Dillinger heavy plate for the
Magdeburg Canal Bridge

Ships usually sail under bridges – here, however, they sail over one! The Magdeburg Canal Bridge, sometimes referred to as the Magdeburg Water Bridge and, at 918 meters, Europe’s longest aqueduct, connects the Mittellandkanal and Elbe-Havel-Kanal waterways, traversing the River Elbe in the process. The bridge can carry trains of barges propelled from the rear by high-power tugs (so-called “push-tows”), and large inland cargo vessels. All this is made possible by a gigantic steel trough. The enormous quantities of heavy plate used – a total of 24,000 tonnes – had to have particularly large dimensions, in order to economize on the need for welds and permit cost-effective utilization of this material, while the selection of longitudinally profiled plate additionally boosted structural efficiency. Dillinger supplied plate in dimensions of 28 meters length and up to 4.5 meters width, more than one fourth in the form of longitudinally profiled plate, with a thickness varying by up to 30 millimeters across plate length.