Adding to its repertoire of International Landmark Projects, SAP2000 can now include the Panama Canal Second Crossing, also called the Centenario Bridge. This 1,052-meter-long concrete cable-stayed bridge, completed in August, 2004 has been officially named the “Centennial Bridge” to commemorate 100 years of Panamanian independence. The Bridge has the longest main span, 420 meters, for a concrete cable-stayed bridge in the Western Hemisphere.

The new crossing traverses the famous canal east-west near the town of Paraiso, Panama and is part of a new highway system designed to alleviate traffic on the existing Bridge of the Americas, a four-lane bridge built in 1962 that has served as the only fixed highway link between North and South America.

T.Y. Lin International of San Francisco, power users of CSI Software for over 25 years are the Structural Engineers responsible for the design of the bridge. The firm used SAP2000 to perform a wide variety of structural analyses to accurately capture the behavior of this complex structure.

SAP2000 allowed modeling of the bridge for different construction erection stages and for different structural systems. SAP2000 was also used for service load analysis, such as live loads, temperature loads and wind loads and for the seismic analysis of the structure. The power of SAP2000 was clearly demonstrated in its ability to easily model and account for the complex three-dimensional effects of the structural behavior.