Renowned for its hot desert climate, Phoenix is surrounded by stunning natural landscapes, including desert parks and scenic mountains. Passing through mountain terrain, a 23-mile section of Interstate 17 is one of the most traveled roadways in Arizona, seeing more than one million travelers each year.
To alleviate congestion and improve traffic flow, a massive, $500-million improvement project is set to widen 15 miles of roadways, replace two bridges, widen 10 additional bridges, and construct 8 miles of flex lanes.
To accommodate the challenging road conditions – rough terrain, heavy traffic – project managers and work crews needed a bridge cap formwork/falsework solution that would increase project safety and efficiency.
PERI USA provided fully rentable and customized formwork solutions for concrete construction to complete the expansion and replacement of the bridges and roadways.
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Crews utilized PERI’s Variokit Pier System (VPS) for the construction of various bridge hammerhead and multicolumn pier caps along the project alignment. VPS changes the way bridges are built with increased safety and efficiency in an innovative, customizable rental solution. The system includes lateral fall protection, a platform deck, guardrail posts, soffit panels, side form holders, speed beams, IPE 600 Variokit steel beams, platform brackets, guard rail post holders, bracing and 100 kip column support brackets. PERI’s VPS system shortens the cycle time to assemble and strip the bridge cap soffit, and a unique feature is that the side formwork is totally independent of the soffit, saving time and money by requiring a lighter crane and fewer manhours to put it together. VPS also delivers a large dancefloor working space to set and work on the rebar cage and crane-independent striking.
“The customer was able to strip two sets of bridge caps each in less than two hours, reconfigure the caps, and set it in place the same day,” says German Ordonez, a sales representative at PERI USA. “They sped through the stripping and reconfiguring phase and really liked the ease and speed to get it ready to go again to the next cap.”
PERI’s Maximo Panel Formwork was used for the bridge cap side forms, offering unparalleled efficiency and performance by reducing the number of accessories needed to erect the system. Through innovative tie technology and a strategically optimized tie point arrangement, Maximo reduces working time by up to 50 percent, revitalizing project timelines. The centrally arranged tie points ensure a uniform joint and tie pattern, enhancing the quality of concrete finishes both horizontally and vertically, all while streamlining the construction process with superior outcomes.
“The customer liked that our bridge cap solution was modular, flexible, with very little waste,” Ordonez adds. “The crew on site was new to using the VPS and MAXIMO systems and were able to learn how to use them efficiently all from short training videos that I provided.”
The I-17 crews also utilized the Variokit RCS Falsework Truss System to pour both flat decks of the new river wash bridge. The system offers a superior high load-bearing capacity of up to 3,000 kNm at a relatively low dead weight. The system has an accelerated construction process through a reduced number of trusses, with the ability to adjust the truss lengths and span widths. This system was combined with the VPS IPE Beams, which were used as the main carrier beams that sat on the VPS Support Brackets to carry the RCS truss system.
“One of the reasons that the Variokit Truss System in combination with the VPS Support Brackets and IPE Beams were ultimately selected was for the ability of the falsework to be suspended from the pier walls without having any shoring towers touching the ground,” Ordonez adds. “The fact that this bridge was over a flash flood zone during monsoon season, and the wash channel fills up with a substantial amount of water, led the project team to select this PERI solution.”
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PERI is a world leading supplier of wall formwork, column formwork, slab formwork, universal formwork, customized formwork, and civil engineering systems. For more, visit www.peri-usa.com.