Design of Reinforced Concrete Railway Bridges with Spans from 3 to 9 meters: Design According to the Eurocodes and the Swedish National Annex

Abstract: National codes have been used in bridge design as well as for the design of other type of strutures in Sweden and other European countries. However, in the last years, the old codes have begun to give way to new common European design standards: the Eurocodes.
All existing bridges, designed according to the earlier codes are gradually getting older, and eventually they will have to be either repaired/strengthened or replaced.
The aim of this thesis is to provide useful standard designs for short railway concrete bridges. Further, the aim is provide a manual for their design without getting lost in the huge amount of information that the Eurocodes offer. The focus is on the most important parts and an effort has been made to make the design process fluent. The designed bridges have lengths between 3 and 9 meters and the Swedish National Annex to the Eurocode has been considered. There will be some limitations in the calculations, for example, the bridges are supposed to have straight tracks.
The work is related to the European Project MAINLINE, which has the aim to help to improve the management of the European railway infrastructure.
The results show, as can be expected, that as the length of the bridge increases, the amount of reinforcement also increases and so does the thickness of the beams. In Appendix A, the calculations for a 6 meters long bridge is given in detail, as an example. A table with reinforcement distribution and dimensions is given for each length, as well as final drawings.
When the results obtained are compared to the ones obtained using the Spanish National Annex for the Eurocode, it can be seen that the two designs are quite similar. The differences are due to some safety factors and coefficients, but they do not make a big change when all the calculations are done.
Sometimes the crack width is the most determinant characteristic in the Spanish design because the maximum crack width is lower. Moreover, the possible differences in the designs are almost evened out after a fatigue verification for 120 years.