Built on the coast of Vietnam and divided by the Han River, the port city of Da Nang, Vietnam is a thriving commercial hub and tourist hotspot. The city hosts a bustling internal market and export system that requires goods to be transported by air, land, and sea into and out of the city center and its districts. To facilitate this transportation process, multiple bridges crisscross the Han River, providing a path for goods and traffic.
The Thuan Phuoc Bridge is one of the most important additions to Da Nang's transit system. With a main span of 650 m (2,133 ft) and a total length of 1,850 m (6,070 ft), the Thuan Phuoc Bridge is the largest suspension bridge in Vietnam, and connects Da Nang's city center with the urban district of Son Tra. The bridge took six years to construct. When it opened in July 2009, the bridge lighting consisted of a conventional flood lighting system complemented with low-power LED battens. As part of a citywide beautification initiative, the bridge's owners decided in 2012 to replace the bridge's original lighting system with a more durable, dynamic Color Kinetics lighting solution.
The new lighting system had to be capable of washing the bridge with beautiful, controllable, color-changing light. Reliability was also an important design criterion, as the lighting system would have to withstand a variety of severe environmental conditions, including extreme heat, harsh winds, and salt water.
The sides of the bridge's deck and sections of its substructure were retrofitted with both 610 mm (2 ft) and 1.2 m (4 ft) lengths of ColorGraze Powercore (now specified with
ColorGraze IntelliHue Powercore) wall-grazing luminaires. The suspender cables are lit by nearly 3,000 iColor Flex LMX color-changing LED nodes (now specified with Flex Compact, RGB), while iW Burst Powercore spotlights wash the bridge's main cables with temperature-adjustable white light. ColorReach Powercore floodlights (now specified with
ReachElite) evenly illuminate the bridge's 80 m (262 ft) towers with saturated color.
The installation uses a Light System Manager Ethernet lighting controller to display simple textures, color-changing effects, text, and graphics on a grand scale across the bridge's main span.
Already important as a commercial pathway, the Thuan Phuoc Bridge is expected to become a popular tourist attraction, thanks to the new lighting system. As an additional benefit, the bridge's colorful displays will serve as a vibrant background for the city's annual international fireworks competition, further bolstering Da Nang's tourism industry.
