Increasing the speed of construction

Tailor Made Concrete Structures – Walraven & Stoelhorst (eds)

© 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-47535-8

Incremental launching of final composite bridge deck

L. Sasek
Mott MacDonald Prague, Czech Republic

ABSTRACT: Launching of final composite bridge deck has all advantages of launching method such as
erection speed, lower costs and high quality of the bridge. Further innovation for composite bridges is the
position of sliding bearings and the sliding trace structure.

1 INTRODUCTION are of reinforced concrete. The bridge height is

17–20 m above ground. The original design proposed
Erection of 230 m long bridge on the highway D3 launch the steel frame of the composite bridge alone,
(from Prague to Austria) was carried out with a unique with the concrete slab expected to be cast in situ after
construction method never used in the world before. completion of the launch.
With composite bridges the steel frame is normally When a steel structure is launched alone and the
built first and the deck cast in situ afterwards. On concrete deck is cast later, the steel structure is able to
this project, incremental launching of final composite resist small vertical reactions only along its length. On
bridge deck was undertaken and proved to be highly the other hand when, launching a completed composite
effective. Speed of the construction was a source of bridge structure, the weight of the deck is four times
financial savings and building of the whole structure higher, because the concrete slab represents 75–85%
in a workshop a prime advantage in terms of quality. of the total weight of the bridge structure.
The proposed bridge structure is very economi-
cal – the steel consumption index was 97 kg/m2 only
compared to a more usual figure of 130 kg/m2 .
Two bridges have been built by directly launching
the final composite deck, one highway bridge in Ger-
many and the second on UK’s West Coast Main Line
railway. These required use of oversized web plates
to avoid buckling caused by migration of support
reactions.
Our bridge has continuous beam scheme of 7 spans
24.0 + 5 × 36.0 + 24.0 m. The bridge deck consists of
two steel I-beams and a transverse prestressed concrete
deck (Figure 1 and 2). The main girders are joined by
steel diaphragms. The diaphragms above the supports Figure 2. Launching track.

Figure 1. Finished bridge.

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 Casting of the concrete slab in situ after launch
of the steel frame causes problems for the contrac-
tor and also for the designer. During concreting of
bridge deck the steel and composite structure change
the static system many times. The structure has to be
monitored during all building stages. Errors due to
geometry of the structure, volume changes of concrete,
change of elasticity modulus etc. must be all taken into
consideration. For every building stage the designer
must calculate thousands of surveying points. These
are necessary to monitor the geometry differences of
the steel structure during deck concreting, settlements
of supports, creep and shrinkage of concrete, ther-
mal changes, framework structure settlement and the
weight changes caused by differences of concrete deck
thickness.
2 CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
With regards to the above mentioned facts, we started
to think about the incremental launching of the final
composite bridge deck not by means of steel beams
but by means of concrete deck. As mentioned pre-
viously, the final composite bridge deck is 4 times
heavier and if it was launched on steel beams it would
have caused substantial increase of the web and bottom
flange thickness. The reactions from the launch bear-
ing migrate along the whole length of the structure and
a greater steel weight is required.
In order to avoid this problem we decided to launch
the structure supported on the bottom surface of the
upper flange next to the beam web (Figure 3).
The concrete slab at this location is connected to
the steel flange by means of studs and the beam web
Figure 3. Launching bearings.
Figure 4. Launching animation.
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acts as a very rigid stiffener. This solution substan-
tially decreases the tensile stresses in the concrete
slab. Inclined webs were designed for better placing
of launch bearings close to the steel webs.
The steel structure was designed specifically to
allow for this form of incremental launching. The
upper flanges of the beams were made in a straight
alignment and the bottom flanges with a camber. For
this reason it was necessary to monitor the plane slid-
ing trace and the differences of the upper flange shape
to avoid increase of tensile stresses in the concrete slab.
The bottom surface of the upper flange that comes
in contact with launching bearings must allow for
geometrical tolerances.
3 FURTHER INNOVATION WAS IN THE
STRUCTURE OF THE SLIDING TRACE
In order to decrease local reactions, one light tem-
porary pier was used in every span. The permanent
piers were designed to resist service load only. The
horizontal friction forces in service stage acting in
the longitudinal direction are compensated with higher
vertical reaction. On the other hand, during launching,
in some accidental cases high horizontal forces can
arise especially when the launching starts.
A special balanced static indeterminate system was
developed to decrease the horizontal loading on flex-
ible piers and abutments and to ensure the stability of
temporary piers. The heads of all piers and abutments
were connected by steel bars. The bars were partly
stressed from one abutment to the other and piers were
fixed to the bars. The temperature changes along the
whole bridge length caused the change of stresses in
bars without any deformation of piers. This system is
adjusted so that the stiffness and prestressing forces
are balanced in the way that no allowable stresses or
deformations were exceeded (Figure 4).
4 CONCLUSION
The presented incremental launching of final compos-
ite bridge deck is a unique solution. The construc-
tion method requires resolution of many problems,
technological processes and structural details. Launch-
ing of the viaduct has recently been completed. The
contractor and investor were satisfied with the speed,
lower costs and high quality of the bridge. Eigh-
teen meters of finished bridge deck was produced
in seven days. From the designer’s point of view
there were significant time savings in calculation of
bridge geometry in many erection stages. The struc-
ture was constructed with high accuracy. Finally, the
architectural quality of structural elements is clearly
recognizable and enhances the aesthetic qualities of
the bridge.

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