Strengthening and repairing of an existing steel bridge using post tensioning

This paper deals with strengthening and repairing of an existing steel box girder bridge by using post tensioned cables. The bridge crosses the river Nile in Sherbeen city near Mansoura, Dakahlia province, Egypt. The bridge has been closed years ago for cars and vehicles as well as for navigation in the river Nile. It is required to reopen the bridge for light weight vehicles and for its movable part to reopen for navigation again. The study for the bridge includes site investigation and finite element (FE) analysis to calculate the failure load capacity for all the bridge elements and the effect of post tensioning in increasing this capacity. The FE model where verified against previous test results. ANSYS finite element program is used to build the models of different parts of the bridge.