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General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge | |
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Coordinates | 10°34′27.38″N71°34′33.73″W / 10.5742722°N 71.5760361°W |
Carries | vehicles |
Crosses | Tablazo Strait |
Locale | Maracaibo, Zulia, Venezuela [1] |
Characteristics | |
Design | Cable-stayed bridge [1] |
Material | Reinforced concrete [1] |
Total length | 8.7 kilometres (5.4 mi) [1] |
Height | 86.6 metres (284 ft) [1] |
Longest span | 235 metres (771 ft) x 5 |
No. of spans | 135 |
History | |
Designer | Riccardo Morandi |
Construction start | 1958 [1] |
Construction end | 1962 [1] |
Construction cost | Bs. 350 million [2] |
Location | |
The General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge is located at the Tablazo Strait outlet of Lake Maracaibo, in western Venezuela. The bridge connects Maracaibo with much of the rest of the country. It is named after General Rafael Urdaneta, a Venezuelan hero of Independence who was born in Maracaibo.
Made of reinforced and prestressed concrete, the cable-stayed bridge spans 8.678 kilometres (5.392 mi) from shore to shore. The five main spans are each 235 metres (771 ft) long. [3] They are supported from 92-metre (302 ft) tall towers, and provide 46 metres (151 ft) of clearance to the water below. [4] The bridge carries only vehicles.
The competition to design the bridge started in 1957 and was won by Juan Francisco Otaola Pavan and his partner Oscar Benedetti, Venezuelan civil engineers and owners of Precomprimido C.A., with the design of Riccardo Morandi, an Italian civil engineer. While Morandi designed the bridge, it was Otaola and Benedetti who made the structural and budget calculations, which in part with Otaola's demand for the project to be done by at least 50% of Venezuelan companies and workforce, secured the winning bid for the Venezuelan government. [5] Precomprimido's was the only concrete design out of twelve entries, and was expected to be less expensive to maintain, as well as providing valuable experience of prestressed concrete technology for Venezuela. [4] Precomprimido's construction was aided by several international companies, primarily Julius Berger as well as Grün & Bilfinger, Bauboag AG, Philipp Holzmann AG, Wayss & Freytag and K Ingeniería.
According to eminent bridge engineer Michel Virlogeux: [3]
the Lake Maracaibo Bridge deserves to be part of the series of the most famous bridges over the world, with the Golden Gate Bridge, the bridge over the Firth of Forth, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Garabit Viaduct.
It was opened on 24 August 1962 by the then-president of Venezuela Romulo Betancourt.
In April 1964, parts of the bridge collapsed after a collision with the tanker Esso Maracaibo, causing the deaths of seven people. [6]
The construction of a second cable-stayed bridge has been proposed since 1982, with a series of studies made since 2000. The cost of the new bridge has been estimated at US$440m, to be largely privately financed via tolls.
The bridge's structural integrity received heightened concern after the August 2018 collapse of a stayed pier on a similar bridge, Ponte Morandi in Genoa, Italy.
A cable-stayed bridge has one or more towers, from which cables support the bridge deck. A distinctive feature are the cables or stays, which run directly from the tower to the deck, normally forming a fan-like pattern or a series of parallel lines. This is in contrast to the modern suspension bridge, where the cables supporting the deck are suspended vertically from the main cable, anchored at both ends of the bridge and running between the towers. The cable-stayed bridge is optimal for spans longer than cantilever bridges and shorter than suspension bridges. This is the range within which cantilever bridges would rapidly grow heavier, and suspension bridge cabling would be more costly.
Eugène Freyssinet was a French structural and civil engineer. He was the major pioneer of prestressed concrete.
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Michel Virlogeux is a French structural engineer and bridge specialist.
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Christian Menn was a renowned Swiss civil engineer and bridge designer. He was involved in the construction of around 100 bridges worldwide, but the focus of his work was in eastern Switzerland, especially in canton Graubünden. He continued the tradition of and had a decisive influence on Swiss bridge building. The technical and aesthetic possibilities of prestressed concrete were most fully realized with his bridges in Switzerland.
Fritz Leonhardt was a German structural engineer who made major contributions to 20th-century bridge engineering, especially in the development of cable-stayed bridges. His book Bridges: Aesthetics and Design is well known throughout the bridge engineering community.
The Rama VIII Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge crossing the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Thailand. It was built to alleviate traffic congestion on the nearby Phra Pinklao Bridge. Construction of the bridge took place from 1999 to 2002. The bridge was opened on 7 May 2002 and inaugurated on 20 September, the birth anniversary of the late King Ananda Mahidol, after whom it is named. The bridge has an asymmetrical design, with a single pylon in an inverted Y shape on the west bank of the river. Its eighty-four cables are arranged in pairs on the side of the main span and in a single row on the other. The bridge has a main span of 300 metres (980 ft), and was one of the world's largest asymmetrical cable-stayed bridges at the time of its completion.
Riccardo Morandi was an Italian civil engineer best known for his innovative use of reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete, although over the years some of his particular cable-stayed bridges have had some maintenance trouble.
Franz Dischinger was a pioneering German civil and structural engineer, responsible for the development of the modern cable-stayed bridge. He was also a pioneer of the use of prestressed concrete, patenting the technique of external prestressing in 1934.
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Ganter Bridge is a multi-span reinforced-concrete road bridge that is the second longest spanning bridge in Switzerland after Poya Bridge. It spans the Ganter River valley and is located along the Simplon Pass road about 10 km (6 mi) south of Brig in the canton of Valais, Switzerland. It was designed by renowned Swiss civil engineer Christian Menn and completed in 1980. It is notable for its innovative design and its stylish geometric profile in its spectacular Alpine setting.
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Esso Maracaibo was a tanker of the Creole Petroleum Corporation. She was the second ship of that enterprise to bear that name, the first one having been USS Narraguagas. Its purpose was to transport crude oil between Lake Maracaibo and Aruba. It made international headlines on 6 April 1964, when it rammed the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, causing two spans of it to collapse.
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