New bridge being constructed in Panama
The 4th bridge to go over the Panama Canal has begun construction. Yet to be officially named, it will go up right next to the Bridge of the Americas, connecting Panama City to the western part where more than 500,000 residents reside. The bridge is expected to improve connectivity to inner Panama, benefitting an estimated 2m people, as well as reduce the traffic on the existing Bridge of the Americas. Once constructed, the cable-stayed bridge will be 1km long, and is expected to have a life span of 100 years.
Bridge features
Once constructed, the bridge will feature two large towers with multiple cable planes consisting of 1,010 meters of cable-stayed main bridge. It will also have a 510m long by 51m wide main span across the canal, and upon completion will hold the world record for unsupported span length for a bridge 51 meters wide. The bridge will also have a 100-year design life and incorporates the latest in bridge design and construction technologies.
Dynamis joins Design team for seismic design
Due to Panama being a high seismic region, the specified bridge design criteria accounts for seismic effects and near-fault effects.
Dynamis was tasked with performing soil-structure interaction, analyzing the dynamic behavior of the foundation of the main bridge and access bridge (east and west). A complex soil-structure interaction model has been built and validated in the frequency domain, and phenomenon such as the uplift of the foundation has been analyzed in detail.
Dynamis used the flexible volume method implemented in SASSI to estimate the acceleration time histories, spectra and foundation impedances (springs and dashpots) in each foundation and provided them to the bridge designer to be used in a global finite element bridge model and identify the seismic forces at the bridge.
