The Second Bosphorus Bridge or Sultan Mehmed Fatih Bridge is a second suspension bridge bridge across the Bosphorus Strait. The bridge connects the neighbourhood of Rumeli Hisary in the European part of the city and Anadolu Hisary in the Asian part of Istanbul. It was built next to the fortresses of Rumeli Hisary and Anadoluhisarı, which controlled the Bosphorus in 1985-1988.
The bridge is named in honour of Sultan Mehmed Fatih the Conqueror of the Ottoman Empire, who discovered Constantinople in 1453. It was designed by Freeman Fox &. Partners, the international consortium that had previously designed the Bosphorus Bosphorus Bridge.
The structure is located behind the 15th century defence fortress of Rumeli Hisary, closer to the Black Sea, crosses the Bosphorus Strait and is 5 kilometres north of the First Bosphorus Bridge. The construction of the Sultan Mehmed Fatih Bridge began in 1985 and was completed in 1988. Its opening, which which took place on 29 May 1988, also marked one of the anniversaries and commemorations in Turkish history - 535 years since Sultan Mehmed Fatih conquered the city of Constantinople.
It is also known that the Second Bosphorus Bridge was erected on the same Bosphorus Bridge was erected on the same site where almost two and a half thousand years earlier the first pontoon bridge of King Darius.
This bridge, despite being built by Japanese builders using the same design scheme as the First Bosphorus Bridge, which is a suspended roadway suspension deck and a cable-stayed suspension system between the pylons, using the same material (steel), it is a more powerful structure, which exceeds its predecessor (both in terms of the length of the centre span and the cost of its construction). The length of the bridge itself is about 1,510 metres. The length of the main span is 1090 metres, the width is 39 metres and the height of the piers is 165 metres above the water level. The distance from the carriageway to the surface to the surface of the water is 64 metres. The bridge is renowned as one of the largest bridges and is and is the twelfth longest in the world. It cost about 130 million US dollars.
In order to build the Sultan Mehmed Fatih Bridge, the engineers designing it did not Sultan Mehmed Fatih Bridge, the engineers who designed it did not invent new structural solutions and materials, but used a long-standing bathtub system American and European cable-stayed steel bridge system. The pylons of the bridges, rising sharply above the water and echoing the towers of the minarets, mosques along the banks of the Bosphorus and modern radio and television towers, give its steel parts a whole new sound. It is therefore safe to say that not only the transport function of the bridges over the Bosphorus, but also the well-chosen form link East and West, Europe and Asia.
The main supporting structure of the bridge was made of flexible cables, chains and ropes, which work in tension, while the carriageway remains suspended. Ropes and wire cables were used in its erection, consisting of high-strength steel with a tensile strength of 2 to 2.5 Gn/m2 (200-250 kgf/mm2). This significantly reduces the dead weight of the and allows the bridge to span large spans. At the same time, it has low stiffness because, due to the movement of the temporary load across the bridge, the cable or chain changes its geometric shape and causes large deflections in the span. In order to reduce the deflections, the bridge has been reinforced with longitudinal girders and stiffening trusses at the level of its carriageway. This contributed to distribution of the temporary load and reduced cable deformation.
The second Bosphorus Bridge is not a pedestrian bridge. It is a an motorway with a toll. Every day about one hundred and fifty thousand vehicles pass over it, carrying over 500,000 passengers. Pedestrian access to the bridge has been closed closed due to the fact that it has been used many times for suicides.
