ESTIMATION OF THE STRENGTH CAPACITY OF EXISTING CONCRETE BRIDGES

IN ROMANIA

Authors:

Gradual changes of weight and geometry of vehicles combined with natural damaging
process caused by weather and traffic sometimes leads to old existing bridges having to
be strengthened and retrofitted.
The optimal solution to follow depends on the resistance capacity reserves of each
structure, related with the existing traffic level at the moment of retrofitting works and for
an estimated future traffic.

Almost all existing road bridges in Romania were designed according to national
provisions/standards, using the old loading classes I and E respectively. Starting with
2010, following the European Community’s decision, the projects should be designed
according to the Eurocodes and the existing bridges, after the strengthening/retrofitting
processes must comply with the new European load models, even though these
structures do not present obvious damages which are claiming such kind of works. The
process of checking existing bridges for the action of load models described in
Eurocodes is a complicated task, involves hard work and consumes a lot of time.
However, for the solutions consisting in the use for the bridge superstructure of precast
concrete girders, the process for the evaluation of the bearing capacity reserves can be
significantly simplified using a probabilistic approach.

The approach presented in this paper is based on the effects, in terms of bending
moments and vertical displacements, produced by several types of vehicles on the
bridge superstructure. For presenting the use of this proposed methodology, typical
bridge superstructure with precast concrete girders of different lengths were analyzed.
These bridges are frequently used on the road network in Romania and they were
designed using the loading models existing in the national standards at that time. The
proposed methodology allows to establish the “vulnerability” of existing bridges on the
action of load models presented in the Eurocodes in order to establish the most efficient
retrofitting solutions.

KEY WORDS: bridge, strengthening, precast girder, stresses, displacements