SEE EES SEE ECE SESS r ee eee eee “Arroyo Las Piedras” Viaduct: The first Composite Steel-Concrete High Speed Railway Bridge in Spain ex Mato, Prot Drs Eng. University Politécnica de Mir, General Manager, IDEAM, SA ‘Javier Pascual Santos, Asst, Prof, Dr, Eng., Politécnica de Madrid, Technical Manager, IDEAM, S.A.: Miguel Ortega Cornejo, Eng. Project Manager, IDEAM. S.A. Madrid, Spain Introduction The paper describes an innovative solution in composite steel-concrete bridges for High Speed Lines (HSL). ‘The new design focuses on typical twin plate girder solutions, but modified to Improve them with box girder capabil- ties. The double composite action used in hogging areas is made general along, the whole length of the bridge to pro: vide it with the torsional stiffness re- quired for adequately controlling the dynamic response when railway stock eccentrically runs along a single track. The paper also describes additional aspects of interest, such as specific de- tails to improve web resistance to con- centrated loads, and some anti-seismic design linked aspects. Keywords: high speed railway bridg- pig. 2- View ofthe bridge es: double composite action steel- concrete; patch-loading: launching: seismic isolation systems. deck’s longitudinal axis to 0,22 m at the edge of the cantilevers. Fig. 4 shows the cross section in sagging areas. It is similar to the typical (win girder so- ! lutions, although some modifications have been brought in:! Description of the Bridge Arroyo Las Piedras bridge is the first composite steel-conerete high speed railway bridge in Spain, located on the HSL Cordoba-Malaga. The struc: tural form isa continuous beam with spans of 504 + 17x 63,5 + 44+ 35m (Figs. 1 and 2).When designed and built, it was the longest span viaduct of its type, 0,50 m more than the Orgon via- duct on the French TGV Mediterran: ‘The piers are remarkably high, since several of them exceed 93 m (Fig. 3) — Cross truss diaphragms situated every 8 mare used instead of full web diaphragms, and facilitate on-site assembly and. significantly reduce the weight of steel and volume of welding required. ~ The bottom steel truss is replaced by a bottom slab of prefabricated plates 2m long each and 0,14 m thick. The plates are longitudinally connected to each other only in the lateral concrete strip cast in place at the bottom corner of the cross section, as described later. The cross section of the deck is made up of two 3,85 m deep twin-plate gird ets plus a top slab 14m wide, whose thickness varies from 041m in the [aes ess WEEE OES GY GF ASS SY Fig. I: Elevation view of the Bridge (Units: m) 292 Structures Worldwide Structural Engineering International 4/2007a0 300 Upperstab_/ Upper _/ | TERT als Sten i Eee id sSine sa O14m Fig 4 Ma-pan bending 10s section Ui) I 0 t t 1 Fig. 5: Hogging eross seetion (Units: m) ~ External inclined steel plates, placed at the top and bottom Of the steel beams, replace the longitudinal web stiffeners. They improve the stability of flanges and webs compressed in assembly and service conditions Stds 2upra Boxtom sa 2uPN0 2uPNO ~ Transversal IPN sections are con- nected to the upper slab every 2m, creating a composite steel concrete grid with the consequent reduction in the slab’s total weight ~ $-355 J2G2W Cor-Ten (weathering) Steel is used in the main structure. Structural Engineering International 4/2007 Beet Suitener Uppers extn pice sas This steel is appropriate for the aimospheric conditions, whilst a reduction is achieved in the cost of ‘maintaining the carbon steel used in the interior trusses ‘The cross section in the hogging areas (Fig. 5) is similar to the sagging cross ‘Structures Worldwide 293section, but double composite action is obtained by bottom in situ concreting over collaborating precast slabs. The bottom slab extends 13:90 m on both sides of the pier in 63,5 m spans. Their thickness varies from 0,25 to 0.50 m. ‘This slab is connected with studs and passive reinforcement to the main girders. and allows the maximum thick~ ness of sheet steel in the bridge to be as little as 40 mm, much thinner than in classical twin girder solutions. ‘The Double Composite Action Generalized for Torsion The twin girder solution for road bridges has to be improved by increas ing the torsional stiffness in order to respond to High Speed Railway re- {quirements The double composite ae- tion was extended to the whole length of the deck to allow the torsion circuit to be closed. The box eross section is ‘obtained in sagging areas with the use fof discontinuous precast slabs con- nected to the girders When eccentric Toads are applied, the transverse truss diaphragms introduce torsion and the bottom discontinuous precast slab acts as a Vierendeel system, developing shearing and bending in its plane and allowing the torsional circuit to close The slabs are 0.14 m thick and 2m long, and are only connected to each other at the lateral 1m wide concrete strip cast in place, for transferring the torsion flow between girders and slabs. Fig. 6 shows the structural response of the discontinuous slab system between ‘Studs Transverse i ‘emoen we and ton lab two successive diaphragms subjected to torsion, ‘The effect of the discontinuous precast slabs on the bridge's torsional stiffness was studied by using finite element modelling. Finally, a 66% reduction of the bridge’s torsional stiffness was achieved compared to what a con- tinuous slab would provide, However, the stiffness efficiently provided by the slabs is drastically conditioned by the possibility of their cracking, The design of the bridge was therefore drawn up under the conservative hypothesis of total cracking of tension areas, In this case the torsional stiffness obtained is approximately 18% of the crackless state, which corresponds to 12% of the stiffness for the crackless continuous slab. A static and dynamic analysis of the bridge using these values s teed an adequate deck response. Even under this extreme cracking hypoth- esis, the equivalent thickness obtained for the bottom slab was about 1.4 mm, similar to that obtained with the clas sical bottom steel trusses, usually be- tween 08 and 2,0 mm, The bottom slabs also respond well in the sagging areas. The absence of a transverse connection between them, beyond that provided by the lateral strip cast in place, prevents the devel- ‘opment of a relevant effective collabo- rating tensile width. Tensile stresses inthe bottom flange are less than 130 N/ mm? under dead loads and 300 Nimm* under the worst live loads and the con- nection between bottom flanges and the lateral strip cast in place and the phragm ais for torsion shea fw precast tts bottom longitudinal reinforcement lo- cated in them are enough to control cracking in this area. ‘The lateral strip east in pace extends over the whole width of the section in hogging areas to provide the double composite action. Compression stress es from bending keep the bottom slab crackless, so bending and torsional stiffnesses in these areas are noticeably higher than those classically obtained ‘with steel sections, Double composite action greatly improves the deform tional and dynamic response both to bending and torsion. The main advantage of the double co- mposite action involves the bridge's response in ultimate limit state (ULS). Cross sections along the whole bridge are class 1 (sagging) or class 2 (hog- ing), ‘The moment-curvature diagram in a hogging cross section located on piers, in an ultimate moment situation, shows that a strain of around 0,28% is reached in the most compressed axis of the bottom flange and 0.7% in the most tensioned axis of the top flange. ‘The ultimate curvature proves to be 3440 times the elastic curvature, and, therefore, highly favourable and sig- nificant ductility is obtained in the re- sponse in the ULS. Asa result,a safe, economical design is possible using a global elastic analysis ‘and an elastoplastic one on cross sec- tion level, both in sagging and hogging areas. There is even enough capacity for almost reaching global plasticity raneverse diaphragm axis Hovizntl beading finfsheor i tera in et oe t + ‘tae (eee ee fiz § ; y PC « | ye - i” Cl r ‘Tension i¢, — Compression stat a Reinforcement tel fori ane bending 200 I ie (amisymete ax) 200 Fig. 6: Torsional response of bottom discontinuous precast slabs and lateral strips cast in place 294 Structures Worldwide Structural Engineering International 4/2007