ROAD BRIDGE ACROSS THE URUGUAY RIVER

PRATO, CARLOS A.; GERBAUDO, CARLOS F.; HUERTA, PEDRO J.; CEBALLOS, MARCELO A.

Structural Engineering International

International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering

Lugar: Zurich; Año: 1999 vol. 9 p. 11 - 13

1016-8664

The Santo Tomé ? Sao Borja road bridge between Argentina and Brazil over the Uruguay River, consisting of 33 simply supported spans of 42.50 m with two vehicle lanes and two pedestrian walkways, was opened to traffic on January 1998 after a period of 14 months of construction. The superstructure, conformed by 3 precast post-tensioned U shaped girders and a cast-in-place concrete deck slab, is supported by plane portal-frame piers made of 2 column/piles with two-diameter embedding on sound basalt as foundation rock. The column/piles of the central 18 spans, 1.50/1.80 m diameter and 24 m height over the top of the foundation rock, were built with steel casings from a moored barge in the stream with a velocity of about 2.5 m/s and 10 meters of water depth. The difficulties to perforate the foundation rock in such conditions were prime motivations to perform the static and dynamic tests during and after completion of construction, in order to assess the effectiveness of the provisions adopted at design stage to keep horizontal displacements along the bridge axis within acceptable values.