Abstract

As part of a major renovation programme of critical highway infrastructure in the Netherlands, the

Tacitus Bridge at Ewijk, a 1055-metre-long orthotropic steel box girder deck of ten spans, with a

main cable-stayed span of 270 metres, has undergone extensive strengthening and refurbishment.

Due to the presence of micro-fissure defects identified in the existing lock coiled stay cables and an

increase in permanent load on the bridge deck resulting from the addition of a high strength

concrete overlay acting compositely with the orthotropic steel deck, it was concluded that the

existing stay cables needed replacement. This paper presents the analytical approach developed to

verify that the existing stay cables could be removed with no additional temporary supports and the

use of advanced non-linear techniques to predict and monitor the performance of the bridge during

each step of destressing the existing stay cables and of tensioning the new parallel strand cables.

Keywords: Stay cable replacement, steel orthotropic box girder, non-linear analyses.