Skip to main content

Brazilian bridge to the beach

The State of Pernambuco in north-eastern Brazil has some of the country's most beautiful beaches, and on the peninsula of Cabo de Santo Agostinho a luxury resort has sprung up with apartments (condominios) and hotels for international tourists. To give the resort a convenient, fast link to the coastal highway, the Via Parque consortium is building a bridge over the Jaboatão River, which separates the peninsula from the mainland.
March 1, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
An impression of how the bridge will look
The State of Pernambuco in north-eastern Brazil has some of the country's most beautiful beaches, and on the peninsula of Cabo de Santo Agostinho a luxury resort has sprung up with apartments (condominios) and hotels for international tourists.

To give the resort a convenient, fast link to the coastal highway, the Via Parque consortium is building a bridge over the Jaboatão River, which separates the peninsula from the mainland.

The 320m long Ponte do Paiva across the river has a clear span of 290m, and is part of a new road system that will cut the journey from the airport to the peninsula from 48km to 14km. It will have two traffic lanes and a pedestrian and cycle lane.

The reinforced concrete box girder is being constructed using the cantilever method, working outward from the two pier heads and back-stayed in every casting section. Via Parque opted for 203 Doka Brasil to supply the formwork, and it planned and supplied a custom formwork solution that was optimally tailored to the specific requirements.

The four cantilevered forming carriages were fitted with a total of 1,000m² of large-area formwork Top 50. The formwork solution called for particular flexibility in the seventh casting section, which at 5m in length is twice as long as a typical section. Using stacking plates and 1.8m long formwork beams, it was possible to lengthen the formwork to the desired dimensions swiftly and safely.

A Doka field service technician coordinated the job of erecting the formwork solution correctly, and was on hand to assist the site team with advice and practical help throughout the start-up phase.

Although the crane had not been erected, forming operations on the foundations of the pier heads had to be started, and Doka Brasil supplied the site with the lightweight, rugged framed formwork Frami. Its low weight means that it can be shifted by hand.

"Even without crane assistance, some very good forming times were achieved with it on the site. Thanks to the logically coordinated panel formats, the crew was able to form the foundations with a minimum of prior planning," said Doka.

The site crew also used Frami on the pier-head itself.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Winning formula for formwork
    July 19, 2012
    An unusual application of formwork took place recently in France, while formwork using one particular engineering construction kit was used for the first time in Poland. Guy Woodford reports An 80m long wild game underpass is an innovative feature of the Route Nationale 88 (RN 88) expansion in south-west France. For construction of the arched underpass tunnel, a PERI tunnel formwork carriage using VARIOKIT engineering construction kit was used. Thanks to the equipment’s easy handling, along with pre-assembl
  • Forming iconic structures
    July 18, 2012
    Specially designed and constructed formwork is being used to create some iconic bridges worldwide The Golden Ears Bridge over the Fraser River will unite the municipalities of Richmond, New Westminister and Delta in the scenic British Columbia province of Canada. The bridge, part of a CAD$800 million (US$670 million) project, is an 'extra dosed' cable stayed bridge, which means the deck will be supported by both cables and the structure itself. This design reduces the overall height of the two towers as req
  • Innovative, flexible bridge formwork systems
    February 14, 2012
    Innovative formwork systems have been used to construct a variety of bridge structures. Patrick Smith reports. As part of the work on Germany's new A4 autobahn near Eisenach, the contracting joint venture awarded the formwork contract for two of the three viaducts to Doka. What makes this assignment so special to the company is that although the two steel composite bridges each have very different cross-sections, the JV is using the same overslung composite forming carriage to pour the carriageway slabs of
  • Doka delivers cantilevering for super-slim piers at Lahntal Bridge
    October 21, 2016
    Doka’s formwork expertise is currently in demand during the construction of one of the busiest motorway viaducts in Germany. The 400m six-lane Lahntal Bridge in Limburg dates from the early 1960s. Every day about 100,000 vehicles cross the bridge that spans the valley of the River Lahn. But traffic loads have increased sharply, so a new bridge is being built sited just a few metres west of the old viaduct. The new Lahntal viaduct will measure a massive 43.5m in width, enabling eight lanes plus hard shoul