Toowoomba Second Range Crossing - Harrison Infrastructure Group

Project Summary

The Toowoomba Second Range Crossing project is a 42km long alternative range crossing route to the north of Toowoomba. It connects the Warrego Highway near Helidon in the east to the Gore Highway at Athol in the west, via Charlton where it re-joins the Warrego Highway heading towards Dalby. This upgrade to the road network improves freight efficiency, connectivity, functionality, safety reliability, and capacity. The section focussed on here is the New England Highway overpass where it intersects with the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing.

The Challenge

The task undertaken was to provide a 3D visualisation of the double arched bridges on the New England Highway, which cross over the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing at Mt Kynoch. A visualisation for the 800m long viaduct had previously been created, and this was used for visiting VIPs so they would have an insight into the overall finished project, considering construction had only just commenced. The New England Highway overpass was originally designed for a standard pier and deck unit bridge construction, with the arches being a late addition. The Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) therefore required another visualisation for the new arched bridges.

The Solution

The approach adopted was to create the visualisation similar to how the bridge would be constructed, by building each component up and in its own model. The first visualisation created was for the arches. Using the detailed design drawings, HIG was easily able to create super alignments from setout points and pipe/culvert the alignment to the arch cross sectional dimensions.
To create the remaining bridge components, they used the 12d Model CAD tools to create 2D shapes of the arch supports, abutments, headstocks and deck units. These were saved to the extrudes.4d file and extruded along alignments that had been created previously.

The Result

With the help of 12d Model, HIG was able to deliver the required information to the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads quickly and easily.