Repairing fatigue damage on an orthotropic steel deck road bridge

摘要

Steel bridges with orthotropic decks are prone to fatigue due to increased heavy vehicle traffic. An example is the 1982 A5 Highway Bridge over the Mannheim-Basel and Karlsruhe-Stuttgart rail tracks in Germany. This paper describes the crossing's specific weak points and analyses its fatigue damage. It discusses the various repair options that were developed and then describes the chosen solution. Additional supports will be built to improve the global characteristics of the structure. For local strengthening, a reinforced-concrete slab will be added as a composite structure with the existing steel deck.%170