The world's longest ice bridge can carry a two-ton vehicle

The bridge, built from water mixed with frozen paper fibers, can withstand the weight of a two-ton truck.

The ice bridge will be built according to a design by Leonardo Da Vinci more than 500 years ago. Photo: Discovery News.

According to Discovery News, from December 28, 2015 to February 13, 2016, a team of students and volunteers joined forces to build the world's longest ice bridge in Finland. At 65 meters long and 5 meters wide, the bridge is strong enough to allow a two-ton truck to pass through.

The construction team based their design on a 1502 sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci. Da Vinci had planned to build a bridge across the Bosporus, a natural strait in northwestern Türkiye, but his drawings never came to fruition.

The bridge in Finland is part of an international project by the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Workers used a material called pykrete, made from water mixed with paper fibers, to build the bridge. When frozen, pykrete is three times stronger than regular ice and 10 times stiffer.

The construction team will spray the mixture onto a giant inflatable sphere that will act as a mold for the arch. Once the material sets, the sphere will be removed from underneath.

The bridge will be tested when completed and if it can handle the vehicle load, it will become a pedestrian bridge. After a few months, when the ice melts in the spring, the paper core will be used as fertilizer.

According to VnExpress