Rehabilitation of Panama´s Bridge of the Americas

Abstract

The America's Bridge (1962) has a length of 1 669 meters and a central span of 344 meters suspended by 46 hangers connected to a trussed tied arch. Following the inspection in 2005 it was found that the hangers made with four parallel wire ropes showed high corrosion and section loss. A complete replacement of the hangers was decided as the best solution. The new system is composed by parallel self-protected strands anchored with fatigue wedges. The chosen replacement methodology pursued the simplicity in the implementation by providing the connection of the new hanger between the existing cables without reducing the security level at any time. The system allowed installing the new connections and prefabricating the new cables with a minimum impact on traffic, bringing together the stages of greatest impact in the shortest possible time limiting critical operations of cutting cables and load transfer at night.