HIGH LEVEL ENGINEERING FOR STAY CABLE

REPLACEMENT

Erik MELLIER1
1
Freyssinet International, Velizy, France

1 INTRODUCTION
Development of cable stayed bridges really started in the 70’s. At that time and until the
early 90’s, the stay cable specific durability requirements were not assessed properly.
Many bridges built at that time now evidence early corrosion and fatigue deterioration
of the cables. As the design life of these bridges is far from being reached, the cables
have to be replaced.
As a leading actor on the stay cable market, Freyssinet has acquired a unique
experience. General Belgrano and Zarate bridges in Argentina, Mezcala bridge in
Mexico, Lanaye bridge in Belgium, Second Severn bridge in UK, Penang bridge in
Malaysia are among the major cable replacement projects Freyssinet has completed
over the past ten years.
This paper evidences the common problematic that was faced on these six projects,
outlining the specificity and the complexity of this kind of works, but also how they are
challenging for engineers.

2 EVALUATION OF THE STRUCTURE

Like any repair work, the first step is the evaluation of the real state of the structure and
particularly the cables. This is to be done in several stages, beginning with a visual
inspection of the structure. As the visual inspection does not automatically delivers all
the information, further investigation needs to be performed, through local openings, or
monitoring, and completed with a computation of structural strength in order to evaluate
the actual safety in the damaged members.

2.1 Visual inspection

Visual inspection of the cable is of course the first action to be undertaken when starting
with cable health assessment on a bridge. This can reveal obvious damages :
- Unusual sag of the cable, revealing the loss of tensile force in the cable,
- Heavy rust on external wire layers,
- Wire failures,
- Even cable rupture.

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 Fig 1: obvious damage on a locked coil cable, Gal Belgrano bridge, Argentina

This is of course the first, cheapest and easiest stage of the inspection. But this is not
sufficient as some cables, especially parallel wire cables can experience gangrene effect.
By this phenomena is called the fact that moisture penetrate into the cable through a
local damage in the outer protection somewhere along the cable, travels by capillarity
along the cable through the inner voids that exist in-between the wires and is trapped
especially at the bottom end of the cable. Due to grout injection and the interwire
friction, broken wires are reanchored by their neighbours which are overloaded and the
load in the cable is not released. Hence the cable can be in very serious distress without
exhibiting any visible sign of it.

Fig 2 : example of gangrene effect on a PWS cable, Zarate bridge, Argentina

A typical example is a bridge in South America where Freyssinet was called to repair
one cable that had experience sudden failure and discovered that 9 other cables where
very heavily corroded (up to 60% of the wires broken) without any visible evidence of
that.
Hence the necessity to go beyond outer visual inspection of the cable and to open and
inspect the anchorages, open locally the outer cable sheath, especially at the bottom end,
next to the anchorage.
Another way to evaluate a cable health is the monitoring of the cable.

2.2 Monitoring
Monitoring the cables can be very useful when assessing a structure as it gives
indications on both the current situation and the evolution of the state of the cable.
Forces can be measured by several means :
A lift-off operation with a jack gives the value at the time of the measure with a very

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good precision.
A method through vibration analysis has the advantage of requiring much lighter
equipments but with an accuracy that is lower.
When one wants to evaluate the force variations under different weather conditions and
traffic configurations through a continuous force measurement, a load cell needs to be
installed.
An acoustic monitoring is also very useful when dealing with fragile cables, either due
to corrosion or bad fatigue behaviour. By automatically detecting the noise emission
when a wire breaks, one can know the number and the frequence of wire breaks, their
evolution with time. Through specific analysis methods developed by companies like
Advitam with their Soundprint® system, it is possible to come back to the residual
strength of the cables and use
it as a warning system in order to act correctly and with the adequate reactivity in case
of a sudden acceleration of the cable degradation process.

Fig 3 : Soundprint® system on Penang bridge, Malaysia

2.3 Computation
The analysis of the real state of the cable need to be completed with a proper and
detailed structural analysis of the bridge in order to quantify the residual bearing
capacity of the structure and any restriction on live load that might be required in most
severe cases so that an adequate level of safety remains.
This was done for example for Mezcala bridge where two cables were damaged in 2007
following an accident involving a truck and a bus that burnt.

Fig 4 : structural model for the assessment of the residual bearing capacity of Mezcala

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 bridge (Mexico) after 2007 major road accident

As part of the repair works, Freyssinet performed a computer analysis of the bridge
behaviour within a few days after the accident and proved that two out of the four lanes
on the bridge could remain in operation without any risk for the structure and for the
users.

3 3D COMPUTER MODEL
Whenever the assessment reveals extensive loss of capacity or shortening of service life
of the cable, the replacement needs to be foreseen. This is a heavy repair operation that
needs to be prepared adequately.

3.1 Computer model

Replacing cables a temporary and sometimes permanent major modification of the
structural behaviour of stay cable bridge. Hence it requires a detailed evaluation of the
forces and stresses in the structure at all stages :
- Initial stage,
- During each stage of the replacement works,
- At the final stage.
Hence it is necessary to build a complete 3D model of the structure in order to assess
properly all consequences of the works on the existing structural members.

3.2 Permanent state

First verification should focus on the structure checking in the future configuration with
new stays. As the cable technology may be changed during the replacement, especially
if the original one has evidenced unexpectedly rapid ageing, the stiffness of the cable
may not be exactly the same. Also, as materials are stronger nowadays than they were a
few decades ago, the engineer can be tempted to benefit from these progresses and
install cables with stronger material and hence smaller cross section.
One has to be careful with the fact that this implies a change in the rigidity of the cables,
often from stiffer to softer cables. Hence deformations under live loads are bigger and
hence flexural stresses in the deck are increased compared with the original state. Three
cases then :
In the best case these overstresses are acceptable and the new cables can be optimised to
modern standards, provided it is demonstrated through calculation.
In the worst case, the structural design is already optimised and the structure cannot
accept any overstress. Hence the new cables have to be designed in order to provide the
same rigidity as the old ones, even if they don’t work at their full strength in service.
In most cases, the reality is in-between and an optimum has to be found through
iterative computer analysis in order find the minimal cable cross sections that induce the
maximal overstresses that are acceptable for the existing structure.
This optimisation has been necessary for the cable replacement of Penang bridge in
Malaysia where original cables were very stiff as they were composed of prestressing
bars encased in a thick steel tube. The Freyssinet parallel strand cables that have been
installed to replace them have of course a much higher working stress (50 % of 1860

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MPa). Hence cables designed for the same ultimate strength would have been too
slender and have induced bending in the concrete deck that would have lead to
unacceptable crack openings.

3.3 Seism
For the same reason, a complete reassessment of the seismic behaviour of the bridge is
necessary if the new cables do not have the same rigidity as the old ones. A cable
replacement operation may also be an opportunity to perform a seismic retrofitting of
the bridge, following a seismic code revision for example.

Fig 5 : reassessment of Penang bridge behaviour under seismic load

3.4 Temporary phases

Temporary phases need to be fully justified as well. The engineering work to be done is
very specific to this kind of repair works, and much heavier than for a classic
construction engineering.
The main reason for this is that the bridge remains in operation during the replacement
works. Hence any construction stage, which corresponds to a different structural model
as cables are missing and some temporary ones are added, is actually a service state and
needs to be combined with traffic loads, wind loads and temperature variations.
An assumption has to be made on the stresses that are acceptable for the old cables
whose capacity is known with a variable degree of reliability. A criteria that can be
adopted and that seems of common sense is that the old cables should not experience
tensile stresses higher than the one they have effectively experienced in a recent past.
This choice of this criteria is crucial in term of the bridge structural safety during the
works. It is the result of a risk analysis and a compromise : if the criteria is too low, the
required structural safety is not obtained. If too high, it will have serious consequences
on the studies and work complexity as it will impose the use of temporary cables
stressed prior to the replacement works in order to release part of the tension in the
existing cables and multiply the number of tensioning and detensionning phases in order
to continuously adapt the cable tensions. Hence it has to be chosen carefully in close
coordination between the owner, the engineer and the contractor.
An other aspect to be careful with is linked to the stiffness variation that was already
mentioned. At the transition between old and new cables, there is a sudden variation in
the stiffness of the deck support. Hence the stiffer cables, usually the old ones, attract
more load than usually, which can lead to unacceptable overstresses. Once again, this

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can make necessary the use of temporary cables or length adjustments on existing and
new cables in order to compensate this effect.

New cables,

Old cables, stiffer Uniform load on

the deck
STRESS CONCENTRATION
IN THE LONGEST OLD
Fig 6 : mechanism of stress concentration in the longest old cable due to cable stiffness
difference

4 TEMPORARY CABLES
Temporary cables are often required when replacing cables.
Different configurations happen actually :
- On old cable stayed bridges cable severance and cable replacement have not been
considered as a load case at the design stage. Hence the deck and the adjacent cables
are not capable of holding the loads when a cable is missing. In that case, temporary
cables are necessary and need to be anchored close to the anchoring points of the
dismantled cable.
- The bridge is designed for cable replacement but additional cables are still required
because the actual state of the existing cables is not known with certainty and extra
cables are used to limit overstresses in adjacent cables. In this case, there is more
flexibility with the choice of the location of the temporary anchors.
Of course, anchoring new cables even temporarily in a structure that has not been
designed for this requires engineering expertise and experience in order to minimize
remaining damage on the structure.
Steel anchorages clamped on the structure with prestressing bars are often chosen as the
damage on the structure is minimal. Especially coring is minimized.

Fig 7 : clamping beam anchoring temporary cables

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5 CABLE DETENSIONNING AND DISMANTLING
The detensionning of the existing cable is certainly the most critical operation as a huge
amount of energy is released during the operation. Hence this needs to happen smoothly
in order to :
- Limit dynamic effects that could damage the structure,
- Prevent any unexpected movement of the cable that could endanger the working
personnel,
- Prevent any unsafe feeling from the bridge users.
The progressive energy release can be obtained by two procedures :
- The cable is composed of multiple tensile elements (i.e. wires) and hence each time
you cut a wire you only release a small part of the total cable force. This is only
applicable when the cable wires are totally independent and do not re-anchor one on
the other, otherwise the energy is not released but transferred to other wires until the
remaining ones fail suddenly.
- It is preferred that the entire cross section of the cable is cut at the same time and in
this case it is necessary to distress the entire cable with heavy means (jacks) either
before or after having cut the cable.
In any case, cutting the cable with tools that are usually used for external prestressing
cables inside concrete box girders is not possible as this would induce excessive hazards
for bridges users and working personnel. A picture of a cut prestressing tendon is self
explanatory.

Fig 8 : controlled cable distressing in progress

6 WORK UNDER BRIDGE OPERATION AND CONSEQUENCES

Another particularity of these works is that they always occur on bridges that are long
span structures and vital links for the economy and the social life of the neighbouring
communities. Hence it is not an option to close the bridge during the replacement works
that last several months.
Only the emergency lane and in most favourable cases one traffic lane can be closed. It
means that these operations have to be accomplished with very limited space,
practically a 3 meter wide strip along the bridge edge girder.
This has crucial consequences on the tools that can be used, the handling capacity, the
sequencing of the works and finally the schedule.

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Many specific tools need to be designed in order to work in such a specific environment
for :
- Distressing the cables
- Lowering the cables to the deck
- Evacuating old cables
- Installing new cables.
On this last item, parallel strand cables offer a significant advantage as the strand by
strand installation process only requires light equipment and small space on the deck.

Fig 9 : Parallel strand stay cable installation on a bridge under traffic

7 CONCLUSION
This paper has demonstrated through various examples that stay cable replacement
works are highly technical works requiring specialised equipment and techniques with
engineering needed at all steps of the operation. Structural assessment, construction
methods and work schedule and organisation are closely interconnected and need to be
studied in a very coordinated manner by teams having experience in all of these fields.
This is the only way for ending with a technical solution that is durable according to
modern standards, compatible with the structural capacity of the bridge, acceptable for
the users in term of disturbance on the trafficability.
Regarding these concerns, parallel strand cables offer significant advantages as they are
modular, require only light equipment and small space for being installed.
By extending the service life of bridges without interruption of traffic, stay cable
replacement operations respond perfectly to the rising demand for sustainable solutions
permitting material and cost savings.

8 REFERENCES
1. BS 5400, Part 4. 1990. CP for Design of concrete bridges.
2. EN 1993-1-11. 2007. Design of steel structures. Design of structures with tension
components.
3. Freyssinet. 2007. Freyssinet HD Stay Cables.

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