Carbon Fibre-reinforced Polymer Strengthening and monitoring of the Gröndals Bridge in Sweden

The Gröndal Bridge is a large freivorbau bridge (prestressed concrete box bridge), approximately 400 m in length with a free span of 120 m. It was opened to tram traffic in the year 2000. Just after opening cracks were noticed in the webs, these cracks have then increased, the size of the largest cracks exceeded 0.5 mm, and at the end of 2001 the bridge was temporarily strengthened.

This was carried out with externally placed prestressed steel stays. The reason for the cracking is still debated and will be further discussed in this paper. Nevertheless, it was clear that the bridge needed to be strengthened. The strengthening methods used were CFRP plates at the serviceability limit state and prestressed dywidag stays at the ultimate limit state.

The strengthening was carried out during 2002. At the same time monitoring of the bridge commenced, using LVDT crack gauges as well as optical fiber sensors.