Yarumo Blanco Viaduct. Cordillera Central. Colombia. 2021.
The La Herradura Viaduct is located on the road that crosses the Central Mountain Range of Colombia to communicate Calarcá and Cajamarca. It is a structure whose works began more than ten years ago and that for various unfortunate circumstances had to be paralyzed -like the rest of the actions of the road of which it was part- leaving the viaduct only partially built.
This situation has since been a huge problem for communications in this area of the country, causing great controversy, as well as strong social pressure to resolve it.
The INVIAS of the Ministry of Public Works, the body responsible for the country’s road network, responding to this need, relaunched the works as soon as it had the opportunity. After a first phase in which the works were assumed by another contractor, the tender for the final project for the completion of the works – called “Completion of the short tunnels, the open-air road and the bridges in the sector between km 7 + 895 and the Americas Interchange – Second Quindío Causeway-Central Cordillera Crossing Project” – was awarded to the proposal made by the Vías América Consortium formed by the groups OHL and FTAA.
This consortium in turn commissioned CFC Sucursal Colombia the Technical Assistance services for the works of the most unique structure of the action, the aforementioned Viaduct of the Herradura.
The name of the viaduct comes from its particular geometry as the whole work is in a strongly curved section in plan. The total length of the structure is 640 m, divided into two independent sections by a joint at approximately half the length on axis called 6 resulting in two structures of 300 m (axes 1 to 6) and 340 m (axes 6 to 12). The first section has a distribution of five spans of spans 37.5m-3×75 m-37.5 m. The second presents 6 with lights 34m-3×68 m-34 m).
The deck is a longitudinally constructed prestressed concrete caisson section built by cantilever advance. It has a width of 11.30 m, and a variable depth between 2.00 m at the keystone and 4.20 m on piles with vertical cores.
The efforts of all the participants in this action have happily led to be able to open this work, and to develop an innovative solution and to our knowledge, completely new in the context of bridge engineering with solutions with seismic isolation.
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