The paper describes the seismic design and construction of two adjacent wharves in greenfield terminals off the Pacific coast of Colombia. The wharves include two quays totaling 850 m and two individual access trestles serving container handling operations and bulk and break-bulk cargo handling (coal exports/grain imports) operations, respectively.
The projects started with the intent of providing waterfront infrastructure capable of handling modern Post-Panamax ship-to-shore quay cranes, mobile harbor cranes and operations of bulk handling equipment in a remote and high-seismic area of Colombia. The design adopted a modular and repeatable open-wharf system consisting of high-capacity steel pipe piles supporting a high-capacity precast concrete deck system. Due to heavy rainfall and the remoteness of the site, a deck system consisting primarily of precast concrete elements was implemented in order to delink construction progress and quality control with site constraints. Deck elements needed to have adequate weight and sufficient reinforcement to resist the 35 kPa operational and STS Crane loads under service conditions; however, given the high seismic activity in the region, the overall design also needed to limit seismically induced lateral deflection.
State-of-the-art performance-based and capacity protection seismic design and detailing for pile-supported wharf structures per ASCE/COPRI 61-14 were adopted for the design of the quay and the access trestles. A key component of design was the development of an innovative precast concrete pile plug providing a practical connection between the steel piles and the concrete superstructure. The plugs were designed to provide significant inelastic rotation capacity without penalizing the deck design. The paper will elaborate on important serviceability and seismic design considerations and explain how these challenges were overcome in design and construction. A significant portion of success in meeting the aggressive schedule was attributed to the innovative construction methods adopted in the project. A linear top-down construction approach was adopted wherein previously installed piles were used to install future piles and deck elements. Due to this, precast element design details had to be made compatible with the top down system.
Construction of both the wharves was completed in late 2016 and they are currently in operation.