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Los caras isolated bridge in the 2016 muisne Ecuador earthquake: Behavior of piers and deep pile foundations

Abstract:

The Los Caras Isolated Bridge is located in the Ecuadorian province of Manabí between the cities of Bahía de Caráquez and San Vicente. It is the longest bridge of Ecuador with a 2-km long main and 48 piers. This paper focuses on the bridge foundations that consist of friction steel pipe driven piles. The piles penetrate the soils for 40 to 74 m and did not reach bedrock that is at an estimated depth of 100 m. A Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) model was developed to study the year-2016 observations especially at Pier 12 that suffered the highest lateral displacements, and Piers 10 and 44 which deformed according to the original design that relied on P-Y spring modeling. The bridge was resilient and remained in service immediately after the earthquake, with minimal repair damage required. Hence, the Los Caras Bridge is a resilient example of a major project, highlighting the use of advanced seismic protective technologies in anticipation of major earthquakes.