Bridge over the River Tagus – Talavera, Spain
Installing VSL stay cables on a record-breaking structure
▲ Two planes of stays support the new bridge over the River Tagus.
A new bridge has been built across
the River Tagus as part of the city
of Talavera’s southern ring road.
The cable stayed bridge has a total
length of 730m , made up of 410m
of an approach viaduct and a 320m
long deck (with a main span of
318m) supported from a single
ranked concrete pylon by two planes
of stays.
VSL was awarded a contract in 2008 for
the design and supply of the stay cables
and their vibration dampers as well as
the post-tensioning for the cable-stayed
structure and the approach viaducts.
In total, 2,000t of stay cable strands
were installed for the 152 stay cables
- 38 strands in each of the planes for
the front and back spans.
▼ 410m-long stays, a record
▲ Assembly drawing of a VSL Friction
damper
The cable bundles range from 19 to
94 strands and the 410m length of
the longest stays has broke the
Spanish record.
The project used the VSL SSI 2000
compact stay cable system, which
has been optimised to allow
complete independence of each
strand.
ID 2678
Self-weight has been reduced by
forming the concrete deck from a
36m-wide single cell box made from
high-strength concrete of up to
80MPa capacity.
The slender 184m-tall pylon stands
174m above the deck and is inclined
backwards at an angle of 22.2 to
compensate for the self-weight of the
deck. The pylon is connected to two
‘deadmen’ by two diverging planes
of stays that present a Y-shape in
plan view.
It enables single strand installation
and provides full encapsulation of
the strands in accordance with the
most stringent requirements.
CLIENT
Spanish Ministry of Civil Works
Dirección General de Carreteras
ENGINEER
Estudio AIA
VSL also defined and detailed the
vibration dampers for the stay
cables, including the design,
fabrication, testing and installation
of a combination of VSL’s Gensui
and Friction dampers.
The VSL dampers are very light as
well as being easy to inspect and
maintain and so could be installed
after the final stressing of the stays.
Installation of the stays was carried
out using VSL equipment, which
proved to be light and reliable.
The first stay pipes were lifted by
a small crane whilst a VSL winch
system lifted the longest pipes for
the front stays of the main span
and all those for the back stays.
MAIN CONTRACTOR
Sacyr - Aglomancha - Barcenas JV
SPECIALIST SUBCONTRACTOR
POST-TENSIONING
AND STAY CABLES
CTT Stronghold (VSL Spain)
DATE
▲ Stressing operations used the lightweight
AMS system.
All strands were installed individually
and stressed with the help of the
Automatic Monostrand Stressing (AMS)
system, which allows elongations and
forces for all the strands of each stay to
be checked and recorded throughout
the operation.
2011
The bridge was opened to traffic in
September 2011 and has become
a major reference project for longspan cable-stayed structures.
▼ Temporary piers were used during erection of the main span.
Edited 2008
www.vsl.com
ID 2678
▼ View from the pylon on a cloudy day