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This paper describes the planning and design of a major expansion at the Port of Cristobal in Panama. The port consists of a series of finger piers and slips connected to a rubble-mound breakwater. The expansion project will reconfigure the existing site by filling the slips and incorporating the existing 100-year-old finger piers into a new marginal wharf and container yard. Major features of the project include 9.9 hectares (24 acres) of pile-supported container yard and a new 420-meter-long (1,378 feet) super post-Panamax wharf.The ambitious three-year development schedule -combined with new construction at a busy, existing port -posed problems solved by partitioning the site and developing a program that allowed a sequenced handover of the works to accommodate the operator's needs.Integrating existing facilities and features into the new construction and unknown subsurface conditions were significant challenges. These challenges included rehabilitation of the existing pier structures, very deep soft soils requiring pile lengths up to 52 meters (171 feet) in length, seismic design of the large heavily loaded pilesupported deck, and accommodation of utilities within the deck structure. The solutions included varied pile types ranging from composite prestressed concrete piles with steel pipe pile extensions to large-diameter steel pipe piles.

This paper presents the design analyses and approaches used for the new bulkhead and foundation system developed for the Port Cristobal Berth 10 Expansion project in Panama. The project generally consisted of extending the existing Berth 10 by about 220 meters. The subsurface soils within the footprint of the new wharf extension generally consist of inter-layered loose liquefiable sandy soil and soft silt and clay determined to be susceptible to significant shear strength reduction under large seismic event. The wharf will be constructed in a 2.0-horizontal to 1.0-vertical dredge slope that is potentially unstable and will impose significant pressure on to the foundation system under large earthquake event. Both the ground improvement and structural foundation option were considered to mitigate the seismic slope instability. A cost analysis revealed that the structural foundation option consisting of large diameter drilled shafts (1,370-mm diameter) and steel batter piles (762-mm diameter) is more cost effective and was selected for this project. Both the force-based method using computer program SAP2000 and the deformation based method using numerical modeling computer program PLAXIS and FLAC were used in the design.