Puente Mercosur – Truss Grider Bridge across the Orinoco Design, Analysis and Construction

With the aim of developing the Southwest of Venezuela and enable its connections with the rest of the country, a third bridge over the Orinoco River is under construction. The combined highway and railroad bridge “Puente Mercosur” has a total length of 11.125 km crossing the Orinoco River and its floodplain. The 2280 m long double deck river crossing carries a 4 lane highway on top and a railway line below. The side spans of the cable-stayed bridge as well as the spans of the double deck approach bridges have regular lengths of 120 m. The deck is assembled in construction yards at river level, before launching each into its final position without any auxiliary pier. The launched segments have weights in the range of 3000 tons and the distance of launching reaches 2000 m.

The paper describes the design, fabrication and construction of an extraordinary structure in a remote place accessible just 5 months per year through the river. From the initial steps of design the execution under these special circumstances had been a key issue.