Recently a good news came out from the Military Communication Institute. The project "Technological Research on Quick Assembling Structure & its Application in Special Engineering" accomplished under the leadership of Professor Yu Zhiguo, director of the National Defense Communication Research Center of the Institute, has won the first prize of National Scientific and Technological Progress Award. People were marveled at the achievement, but who knows how much painstaking efforts Professor Yu has made behind the achievement?

　　Unload heavy equipment without port

　　In early May 1997, strong wind threw waves high in Tianjin sea waters in Bohai Bay. A freighter, carrying super large petrochemical equipment imported from Japan to China, braved the wind and sailed towards Tianjin Xingang Port. Since the cargo was overweight for Xingang Port to unload, if the freighter carrying over 600 tons of heavy equipment got stuck in the port, if had to spend hundreds of thousands of yuan a day. Over ten hours passed, Tianjin Xingang Port still could not unload the heavy equipment on the freighter.

　　The great pressure forced the owner of cargo to look for master-hand everywhere, and at last they found Yu Zhiguo. Yu led related experts rushing to Tianjin Xingang Port immediately. After many times of on-the-spot survey and repeated researches, the project team dug a temporary port at the estuary of the Haihe River, Tianjin, in a short time. With self-developed 800-ton crane, they managed to haul the "jumbo" onto the shore. They had set a record of unloading two machines within 10 days, saving a large sum of money for our country.

　　Bridge-building machine creates wonder

　　In the summer of 1999, the wave was surging under scorching sun in the Yangtze River in Wuhu, Anhui Province.

　　The 10617-meter-long Wuhu Yangtze River Bridge was under construction. There were 160 crossbeams on the bridge approach, each 40 meters long and weighing 300 tons. It must be the heaviest bridge with the largest span at that time. The important task again fell on Yu Zhiguo, who was in charge of building a 164-arched crossbeam of the bridge. The length of the Wuhu Yangtze River Bridge equals to the length of the Yangtze River bridge in Wuhan plus the one in Nanjing. It is significant for economic construction of our country. To ensure construction, the project team developed a bridge-building machine that can be disassembled. The bridge-building machine used non-shock technology for the first time in China, making lifting crossbeam operation easy, safe, reliable and flexible.

　　On the day of construction, many experts and scholars came to the building site. When they saw such a heavy reinforced concrete crossbeam was lifted up and put into place easily under the operation of just a few workers, they gave the task team thumbs up and praised it as a pioneering work in the history of railway and road construction of China.

　　Weapon trains speed up

　　Yu found in a survey that, a missile troops of the PLA had to cover thousands of kilometers for target practice every year. During transportation on railway, the train could only run at 50 km/h. When the escort train was running, all other trains had to give way, often delaying passenger trains and stopping cargo trains.

　　Yu focused his research on weapon train for missile troops. According to the requirement of the project, the research team made a simulated load experiment for sample train on the railway. The train was designed to reach the fast speed at 120 km/h. To reach that speed, the experimental speed must reach 135 km/h. When the sample train smoothly reached the terminal at 135 km/h, Yu was so happy that he jumped into the air. According to statistics, when the train has been put into operation, it can save tens of thousands of yuan every minute, and save tens of millions of yuan for each target practice trip.

　　By Ye Guixian and Cui Chengyong

　　(August 13, PLA Daily)