Investigations on the fatigue loading of thin-walled and resource-efficient UHPFRC segmental bridges

Abstract

Many reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete bridges are defective or can no longer withstand the increased traffic loads for a sufficiently long time. In the long term, they will have to be replaced by new structures. In previous reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete bridges, fatigue loading (e.g. traffic, wind) is rarely a problem with regard to the concrete, especially since the cyclic traffic loads are relatively low compared to the static dead loads due to a solid construction method. However, for reasons of sustainability and compliance with climate targets, future structures and bridges should be built in a resource-efficient and materials-compatible manner, while at the same time fast and durable. A target-oriented approach to this is segmental bridge construction with keyed dry joints made of ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC). In these bridge structures the fatigue loads could become more relevant due to the slenderness of the thin-walled UHPFRC bridges superstructure and fatigue problems could occur. In order to investigate this in more detail, FE investigations on segmental box girder bridges under variation of the concrete strength (NSC, HSC and UHPFRC) were carried out, while optimising the cross-section dimensions. It was shown that due to the performance of UHPFRC and the associated cross-section optimisation, an exponential increase in the ratio of cyclic live loads to static dead loads and thus an exponential increase in fatigue loading occurs at thin-walled and resource-efficient UHPFRC segmental bridges compared to NSC and HSC bridges and that this can become relevant for the design of such bridges.