Puente Río Mezcala
Coordinates: 17 ° 56 ′ 13 ″ N , 99 ° 22 ′ 9 ″ W.
| Puente Río Mezcala | ||
|---|---|---|
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| use | Highway bridge | |
| Convicted | Autopista del Sol | |
| Crossing of | Río Mezcala | |
| place | at km 220 the Autopista del Sol | |
| construction | Cable-stayed bridge | |
| overall length | 882.5 m | |
| width | 20 m | |
| Number of openings | six | |
| Longest span | Max. 311.5 m | |
| height | 160 m | |
| start of building | 1989 | |
| completion | March 1993 | |
| planner | Modesto Armijo | |
| location | ||
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The Puente Río Mezcala (formerly Puente Río Mezcala Solidaridad , colloquially just Puente Mezcala ) is a motorway bridge on the Mexican Autopista del Sol ( Carretera Federal 95D ), which connects Mexico City via Cuernavaca with Acapulco on the Pacific .
description
The Puente Río Mezcala crosses the Río Balsas , which is called here Río Mezcala , at kilometer 220 of the Autopista del Sol from Mexico City at a height of 160 m . After Acapulco there are still 186 km.
While the motorway, which runs through a largely deserted area, has narrow hard shoulders, there are only two directional lanes on the bridge, separated by crash barriers , with two lanes each, but neither hard shoulder nor sidewalks or cycle paths.
The cable-stayed bridge , with a total length of 882.5 m , is supported by three pylons and two narrower supports on the steep north slope of the river and thus has (from north to south) spans of 39.5 + 68 + 84 + 299.5 + 311.5 + 80 m.
The pylons and supports are made of reinforced concrete . The middle pylon is the tallest bridge structure in North America with a height of 236 m and is higher than the pylons of the Golden Gate Bridge . It is stiffened above the bridge deck by two crossbars, while the other two, smaller pylons only have one crossbar. On the large central pylon, 14 stay cables are stretched in each direction of travel on both sides of the roadway girder, 10 each for the smaller northern pylon and 11 each for the southern pylon. There the outermost 5 ropes on each side are not anchored in the carriageway girder, but in the abutment below, built into the slope.
The roadway girder consists of a steel grid that is connected to a concrete ceiling. It has a height of 2.80 m.
history
The Puente Río Mezcala was built between 1989 and 1993 together with the new Carretera Federal 95D, which was laid out on a new, significantly shorter route between Cuernavaca and Chilpancingo .
On March 17, 2007, an accident occurred on the bridge when two school buses and a truck loaded with coconuts collided and the vehicles caught fire, which spread across one of the stay cables clad with HDPE polyethylene . The great heat development led to the breakage of this stay cable. The rope was replaced soon afterwards, but the accident sparked discussions among experts about the circumstances under which the failure of individual load-bearing elements in wide-span structures can lead to the failure of other elements.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mezcala Viaduct. In: Structurae
- ↑ a b Leonardo Fernández Troyano: Bridge Engineering. A global perspective. Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puentes, Thomas Telford 2003, ISBN 0-7277-3215-3 , p. 604
- ↑ Mezcala Bridge on Highest Bridges.com
- ^ Theodore P. Zoli, Justin Steinhouse: Some Considerations in the Design of Long Span Bridges against Progressive Collapse. (undated)
