On September 27, the world's largest pile-driving vessel, the "Tiejian Daqiao Zhuang No. 1," which was invested in and built by China Railway Construction Bridge Engineering Bureau Group, departed from the foreign trade terminal at Lüsi Port in Jiangsu for Todos os Santos Bay in Bahia, Brazil, to participate in the construction of the Salvador Sea-Crossing Bridge, the largest sea-crossing cable-stayed bridge in Latin America. This marks a further step forward for China's high-end marine engineering equipment in serving global marine engineering construction, as it advances into deeper and more distant waters.

According to Xinhua News Agency, citing a relevant person in charge of China Railway Construction Bridge Engineering Bureau Group, before departure, the vessel and shore parties completed the preparation of a special plan, route determination and risk assessment. According to the plan, the vessel will sail through the Strait of Malacca and around the Cape of Good Hope into the South Atlantic, and arrive in the waters off Recife on Brazil's northeastern coast. The voyage is 11,300 nautical miles and is expected to take 45 days.

The Salvador Sea-Crossing Bridge spans Todos os Santos Bay in Brazil and is the sea-crossing bridge with the world's deepest-water pile foundations. The water depth at the main bridge pile foundation construction site is 64 meters, and the marine geological conditions are complex. The "Tiejian Daqiao Zhuang No. 1" has a total length of 130.5 meters, an operating water depth of up to 70 meters, a pile frame height of 156 meters, and a pile-lifting capacity of 700 tons. It is currently the pile-driving vessel with the world's highest pile frame, largest pile-lifting capacity and deepest operating water depth, and can overcome the operational bottlenecks of traditional pile-driving equipment in deep and distant seas and complex sea conditions—"cannot reach, cannot drive accurately, and cannot remain stable."

Technologically, the vessel has achieved two world firsts: it is the first large pile-driving vessel to apply an integrated "DP dynamic positioning + anchor mooring positioning" technology. Anchor mooring positioning uses anchors deployed from the four corners of the hull into the seabed to fix the vessel's position; the dynamic positioning system senses wind, waves and currents in real time, and rudder propellers at the bow and stern generate reverse thrust to finely adjust the hull. Combined with China's domestically produced BeiDou high-precision satellite positioning system, pile-driving positioning accuracy is controlled at the centimeter level. It is also the first pile-driving vessel to apply a closed hydraulic system for the main cylinders. The system is fully independently designed and manufactured in China, converting the potential energy generated when the pile frame descends or tilts forward into electrical energy for recovery, with an energy recovery rate of 40 percent.

The Salvador Sea-Crossing Bridge is invested in, constructed and operated by a concession company jointly established by four shareholders, including China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation and China Railway Construction Bridge Engineering Bureau Group, both under China Railway Construction Corporation. The bridge has a main span of 682 meters and a total length of 46.8 kilometers.