PSI - Issue 64

Petr Tej et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 64 (2024) 1089–1094 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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1. Introduction The main portion of the Vyšehrad Railway Bridge provides a vital railway and footway connection across the River Vltava in Central Prague (Fig. 1a). The Vyšehrad Bridge consists of three parts that belong together and form the whole of the Vyšehrad Bridge. It consists of a stone viaduct, four riveted spans of plate structures and three 70 metre spans of parabolic arches (Fig. 1b). The location, age, form and materiality of the historic railway bridge have led to it being recognised as an important piece of the urban heritage in Prague. The heritage value of the bridge is also recognised to form part of the wider UNESCO heritage value of the historic city centre. The bridge ownership and management is split between the railway authority, Správa Železnic (SŽ) and the City of Prague, who are responsible for the ‘railway bridge’ and the ‘footbridges’, respectively. The railway bridge is the principal structure forming the primary load carrying truss of the superstructure and is the primary point of concern due its documented defects. Due to long neglected basic maintenance, the bridge structure had deteriorated to such an extent that SŽ decided that the bridge could not be saved and had to be demolished. However, the authors of this paper have carried out an assessment of the preservation of the structure and believe that the bridge can be repaired. The paper is based on a study by Petr Tej, Andreas Galmarini and Ian Firth (Firth I., Galmarini, A., Tej, P., 2024).

Fig. 1. (a) Location of the bridge in Prague, Czechia.; (b) Vysehrad Railway Bridge - riveted structure with three parabolic arches with a span of approx. 70 m 2. Assessment of damage and design of reconstruction 2.1. History of repairs Since the construction of the bridge in 1901-1907, where it replaced an older structure, there have been two structural interventions relevant to the assessment and current refurbishment designs carried out for the bridge. The major historical bridgeworks are summarised below: • Original steel superstructure construction for the two-track bridge (1901-1907) - drawings for the three trusses, dated June 1900. • Refurbishment for electrification (1969-1970) – drawings for the modification of the upper stiffening and end portals, dated 1969. • Deck stiffening and bracing (1987) – no formal drawings/documentation available. An AutoCAD file and geometry surveyed during previous inspection works and documented has been used in combination with site measurements.