Pfieffetal Bridge

Coordinates: 51 ° 6 ′ 39 ″  N , 9 ° 35 ′ 9 ″  E

Pfieffetal Bridge
An ICE 1 on the Pfieffetalbrücke
Convicted	High- speed line from Hanover to Würzburg
Subjugated	B 487
place	Melsungen
construction	Prestressed concrete box girder bridge
overall length	812 m
width	14.3 m
Longest span	116 m
Construction height	5.3 m
height	61 m
start of building	1987
completion	1989
location

The Pfieffetalbrücke is an 812 m long, double-track railway overpass structure on the high-speed line Hanover – Würzburg (route kilometers 169.2).

Training of A-frame and pillars. Bottom view of the superstructure with box girder

The girder bridge is located near the Melsung district of Adelshausen in the Schwalm-Eder district in northern Hesse and spans the Pfieffetal with the Pfieffe brook , a tributary of the Fulda , and the B 487 between Adelshausen and Mörshausen , at a maximum height of 61 m above ground Spangenberg district . The Malsfeld – Spangenberg section of the Leinefelde – Treysa railway line , which was closed in 1986, runs in the valley .

history

In the planning phase, the bridge was on the southern edge of planning section 13 in the middle section of the route. The structure was built between 1987 and 1989 for the Deutsche Bundesbahn.

The modeling of the pillars and the A-frame was carried out as part of a special proposal analogous to the Mülmisch valley bridge, which had previously been built by the same Wetzlar construction company.

In February 1988 the construction of the wooden scaffolding began. Compared to conventional steel scaffolding, in connection with the neighboring Mülmisch valley bridge, around 200,000 D-Marks could have been saved.

The costs were 38.6 million Deutschmark quantified.

In the second half of 2019, an operational test began on the bridge with rails painted white to lower the rail temperature. On one track the rails were colored white over a length of a thousand meters, but not on the other. Since then, sensors installed on the rails have measured the temperature of the steel, and the temperatures of the two tracks are compared by a computer. The data should be evaluated by the end of 2020 and a decision about further use should be made.

Substructures

View from the south

The abutments and pillars are founded on red sandstone with large bored piles . The piles are 1.5 m in diameter. As a rule, 12 piles are arranged under pile head plates with the dimensions 11.2 m × 11.2 m × 2.3 m. In the bridge there is an arched A-frame with a span of 116 m, which corresponds to twice the span of the normal fields. Due to the shape of the valley, the A-frame stands outside the center of the bridge. This is the fixed point of the bridge and in particular transfers the longitudinal forces due to braking from the longitudinally coupled superstructure into the subsoil. The A- frame has a hollow cross-section made of reinforced concrete and, together with the two adjacent pillars, is each founded on a pile head foundation.

The rectangular reinforced concrete pillars with a maximum height of 53 m have a hollow box cross-section with a wall thickness of 35 cm. In contrast to the other bridges on the route with sloping pillar corners, these are designed with emphasized reinforced pillar corners and a curved shape at the pillar head. The minimum external dimension below the pier heads is 5.3 m × 3.2 m. From there the supports widen with a 60: 1 tightening in both directions downwards.

Critics criticize the shape of the pillars as unnecessary.

superstructure

Cross section of the superstructure

The superstructure consists of a chain of 14 single-span girders . This enables individual bridge segments to be replaced later. The cross-sectional shape is a single-cell reinforced concrete box with inclined webs, prestressed in the longitudinal direction . In addition, the deck is prestressed in the transverse direction. With a superstructure width of 14.3 m, the spans are uniformly 58 m. The constant construction height of 5.3 m (1/11 of the span) is relatively high due to the required rigidity to limit deflection.

execution

Building board of the Deutsche Bundesbahn from 1989

The A-frame was on a wooden shoring shuttered . The 6.5 m wide scaffolding consisted of five rows of logs , one behind the other, made of round timbers , which were connected with square timbers and steel wind pan straps . The scaffolding was braced in the transverse direction. The superstructure was concreted field by field with a feed scaffold every two weeks. The scaffolding consisted of a prestressed concrete trough with a protruding nose that was demolished after the bridge was completed.

The Kassel road construction authority was entrusted with the supervision of the construction.

literature

• Ernst Rudolph: Railway on new paths . Hestra Verlag Darmstadt, 1989. ISBN 3-7771-0216-4
• H. Harries, H. Petri, HG Reinke: The Mülmisch and Pfieffe valley bridge . In: Der Bauingenieur , 64, 1989, pp. 549–558.

Web links

Commons : Pfieffetalbrücke  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bundesbahndirektion Frankfurt (M), project group NBS Frankfurt am Main of the Bahnbauzentrale (publisher): New lines Hanover-Würzburg from Kassel to Fulda, Cologne - Rhine / Main in the directorate area . Leporello with 12 pages (10 × 21 cm), Frankfurt am Main, no year (approx. 1984).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Renaissance of the wooden framework . In: Die Bahn informs , ZDB -ID 2003143-9 , issue 3/1988, pp. 10-11.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Joachim Naumann, Günter Moll: Road and Rail . In: Die Bundesbahn , 9/1988, pp. 885–892.
4. ↑ White rails against the heat . In: Electric Railways . tape 117 , no. October 10 , 2019, ISSN  0013-5437 , p. 421 .
5. ↑ Cooling paint for rails. In: deutschebahn.com. Deutsche Bahn, June 24, 2020, accessed on June 24, 2020 . 
6. ↑ DB Netze (Ed.): Guide to designing railway bridges . 1st edition 2008, p. 17.