en
ES
Project Description
Pipiral Bridge is located on the Bogota-Villavicencio road. This road stretches 86 km to connect the Colombian capital Bogota to the East of the country across Los Andes mountain range. This highway is owned by Vial Andina road concession, a PPP contract promoted by the Colombian government to improve the road network and upgrade major roads by adding more lanes.
The bridge has an overall length of 775 m, including an approach viaduct and the main bridge, which has a span configuration of 75+140+140+140+75 m. The deck is a single-cell box girder built with the balanced cantilever method with rectangular hollow piers with a monolithic pier-to-deck connection.
The bridge crosses a valley with steep rocky slopes. The bridge is irregular, with piers variable in height from 8 to 64 m. It is located in a very high seismic hazard zone, which was challenging for an irregular bridge. The piers have been designed with the aim of regularizing the distribution of the seismic demand among them. The shortest pier is isolated with circular Lead Core Rubber Bearings (LRB) of 1.22 m in diameter.
This highway will significantly reduce the travel time from Bogota to the East of the country, boosting the Colombian economy. The bridge was opened by the end of 2019.
