Fronius welding technology for the Expo 2008 bridge

Between June 14th and September 16th 2008, the city of Zaragoza in northern Spain will host the Expo world exhibition. The exhibition’s theme of "Water and Sustainable Development" is generating a great deal of interest around the world. Its symbol is the 275 m long River Ebro bridge, which contains 5,500,000 kg of steel. Fronius welding systems were chosen for the welding work.

Urssa, a well-known Spanish exposed steel construction company, has been working on the imposing Bridge Pavilion for the world exhibition since January 2007. The welding technology, consisting of 42 TransPuls Synergic 4000, VarioSynergic 5000 and TransSynergic 5000 systems, was supplied by Galaelectronic, the Spanish representative of Fronius International.

At peak times, 160 welders worked on site in a two-shift system to join the steel plates, 95% of which are between 6 and 100 mm thick. The finished steel construction has 10,000 welded joints, which required a total of 100,000 kg of filler material to bridge weld gaps of up to 2 mm.

Pedro Arredondo, the technical project leader at Urssa: "The practical tests we carried out at Fronius convinced us of the technical suitability of their welding systems. We also appreciate the fact that a local service facility is available".