Puente Huallaga
Santa Lucía, Peru

Owner

Provías Nacional (Peru)

Contractor's Technical Assistance

CFC (Carlos Fernández Casado S.L.) – Hualca Ingenieros S.A.C.

Design

Jack López Ingenieros

Puente Huallaga is a cable-stayed bridge designed over the river of the same name in region of San Martín, Peru. The singular structure has a composite deck section with longitudinal and transverse steel beams and a reinforced concrete top slab made of precast panels and cast-in-place stiches. The designed span distribution is 6 m + 87 m + 220.5 m + 87 m + 6 m (total length of 407.5 m). The erection process involved two types of procedures: For the side spans, temporary supports were used and, for the main span, the deck was constructed by cantilevered advance using telescopic cranes.

The calculation model developed with SOFiSTiK was employed to perform exhaustive control of the geometry and stay cable forces during the construction process. Using the stage-by-stage finite element model, where pylons and steel girders were modeled as beam elements, the deck slab as shell elements, and the stays as cable elements, all construction stages were analyzed via linear analysis.

This process included an iterative approximation of stay cable stiffness based on the load in each phase and accounted for rheological phenomena (creep and shrinkage). Based on the model results, erection elevations for each phase and the necessary stay cable forces were determined to achieve the target final geometry and satisfy the internal force requirements according to the design hypotheses. The stage-by-stage analysis provided the deformations for each step, which were then compared against on-site topographic surveys of the geometry at each stage and the final bridge geometry.