DANISH STRAIT CROSSINGS:
THE FEMERN BÆLT LINK BETWEEN DENMARK AND GERMANY
Mikael W Braestrup, M Sc, Ph D, Senior Engineer, RAMBOLL, Copenhagen, Denmark
e-mail: mwb@ramboll.com
Abstract
The Femern Bælt Tunnel, scheduled to open for traffic in 2021, will join Denmark and Germany by a
four-lane motorway and a dual track electrified railway. With an immersed length of 17.6 km (11 miles)
it will be the longest immersed tunnel in the world, as well as the longest tunnel of any kind for
combined road and rail traffic. The EUR 7,400 million toll funded coast-coast crossing will be sponsored
by the Danish government, Germany being responsible for the landworks on the German side only. The
owner and operator will be the Danish state-owned company Femern A/S, who will finance the
construction by loans guaranteed by the Danish government and paid back by road tolls and railway
user fees.
Femern Bælt Link location
The presentation will review the 20th century development of Danish strait crossings, and describe the
inception, design, fabrication and installation of the Femern Bælt immersed tunnel. The construction
will follow the principles successfully adopted for the 3.5 km Tunnel of the Øresund Link between
Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmö in Sweden, opened for traffic in 2000. A construction yard will be
established to pre-fabricate 79 standard tunnel elements of length 217 m and 10 special elements, 46 m
long, accommodating mechanical and electrical equipment, as well as access for maintenance.
MWB Bio - Details
Born in 1945, Mikael W. Braestrup obtained his Ph.D. in structural engineering from
the Technical University of Denmark in 1970. After spending two years as a volunteer
in charge of low-cost road construction in Peru he was engaged in structural concrete
research and teaching in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Cambridge, U.K. He joined the
consulting company Ramboll in 1979, and worked during five years on the design and
construction of the offshore pipelines of the Danish Natural Gas Transmission
System. Subsequently he has headed the Ramboll departments of Marine Pipelines
and Underwater Technology, and of Knowledge and Development, managing a
number of research projects. During the period 1992 - 2005 he worked in the Ramboll
Department of Bridges, a major assignment being the preparation of the design basis,
with the application of Eurocodes, to the 16 km Øresund Link road and rail strait
crossing between Denmark and Sweden. Since 2005 he is attached to the Ramboll Oil
& Gas Department of Pipelines and Subsea.
Dr Braestrup is an active member of several of international associations (fib (CEB FIP), IABSE, ACI), and has served on several Danish code committees. He is the
author of a substantial number of papers, monographs and reports on concrete
plasticity, marine pipelines, and bridge and tunnel projects.
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