Cable stayed footbridge construction project over the A-7 motorway (Barberà del Vallès)

Due to the social demand of neighbourhood of Barberà del Vallès (Barcelona), a cable stayed
footbridge of 200m length between the village of Barberá del Vallés and the Baricentro
shopping centre is designed. These areas have been historically segregated by many road and
railway infrastructures.
The current economic crisis implies careful consideration in terms of cost and conditioning
factors of the project. All these factors lead to perform an iterative process for the design and
conception of each footbridge structural element. The high induced concentrated loads at
anchors and at the top panel of the box girder are important issues that need to be analysed, in
order to assure the integrity of the structure in both service as during construction.
The presented paper intends to show the practical utility of patch loading analysis using FEM.
Steel panels may yield due to the local effects, requiring an iterative process to select the
adequate stiffener thickness that assure structural stability at ultimate limit states.