Short Term Solutions for the Assessment of the Shear Capacity of Existing Prestressed Concrete Bridges

摘要

The demands on existing bridge structures have increased over the last decades due to rising traffic loads and will continue to rise in the future. In this research project, funded by the Federal Highway Research Institute of Germany, different refined shear design approaches for the shear assessment of existing bridges have been verified on a short term basis. For this, advanced scientific design procedures on the basis of the so-called Level 4 of the German guidelines for the recalculation of existing bridges were taken into account as well as recent research results. Afterwards, possible modifications of current design procedures and alternative design procedures have been worked out and were in part recommended to be included in an update of the German recalculation guidelines. Since the use of Level 4 methods is restricted to scientific institutions, these modified approaches were now be recommended for general use within Level 2 of the recalculation guidelines. By this, the assessment and refurbishment of reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges will become more efficient and economical. The modified and refined approaches were also exemplarily used on existing bridge structures to demonstrate their effectiveness for the shear assessment.