Weathering Steel Bridges – the New European ECCS Design Guide

Abstract

Modern bridge structures should not only be efficient in terms of planning and construction, but require also low maintenance efforts. Weathering steel is therefore the ideal material for steel and composite bridges. It does not require any corrosion protection to permanently withstand the effects of the weather. The typical renewal measures for protective paintings can be omitted, which leads to significantly lower life cycle costs and interventions in the traffic flow. When designed and detailed correctly and used in the correct environment, weathering steel performs excellently. To gather the existing experiences and recommendations from different countries and make them available to all designers, the European ECCS design guide for weathering steel bridges has been renewed and supplemented with the latest research results to an efficient tool for a good design of weathering steel bridges. This article will present a selection of extracts from the document, which was recently published.