October 12, 2023 1:00 pm

Eugen Brühwiler, Dr Structural Engineer, Professor and Director of the Laboratory of Maintenance and Safety of Existing Structures, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

Webinar Documents:

October 12, 2023 Ferpecle Eugen Brühwiler presentation - PDF of presentation

Questions and Answers from October 12 2023 Webinar Ferpecle - PDF of Q&A

News - October 12, 2023 - PDF of presentation

Description: The Ferpecle Bridge is one of the first prestressed concrete bridges in Switzerland. Dating from 1958, the bridge structure consists of a single beam with a span of 34.5 meters (113 ft) which rests on abutments in the form of reinforced concrete pillars. The existing bridge deck was only 5.3 meters (19 ft) wide for bi-directional road traffic, and thus, widening to 7.9 meters (26 ft) was necessary to accommodate future needs. Consequently, the bridge structure required a strengthening intervention. In order to increase its structural capacity, tensile strain hardening Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) was used to key monolithically the bridge girder with the abutments to obtain a half-frame structure, reducing stresses in the main beam. The whole structural intervention was done using UHPFRC, including the widened cantilever slabs. The design principle and dimensioning of this UHPFRC intervention as well as the execution of the UHPFRC works, realized this summer, are presented. The effectiveness of this UHPFRC project in terms of costs and environmental impact are discussed. Lessons learned for this project are included.

Presenter:

Eugen Brühwiler, Professor, Dr Structural Engineering
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL)
Luasanne, Switzerland
Email: eugen.bruehwiler@epfl.ch

Eugen Brühwiler is a Professor of structural engineering and Director of the Laboratory of Maintenance and Safety of Existing Structures at EPFL – the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, since 1995. His teaching and research activities include methods of bridge examination of structural and fatigue safety by means of data from monitoring as well as the use of Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites (UHPFRC) for the rehabilitation and strengthening of existing RC structures and the design and construction of new UHPFRC structures.