ABSTRACT
In old inner cities of the Netherlands a lot of steel-concrete bridge decks are built in the period between 1880 till 1960. Some of these bridges are renovated while the bearing capacity had to be upgraded by introducing the tram as public transport possibility. The assessment of those existing structures aren’t covered by the current Eurocode of steel-concrete bridge decks. A minimum of interaction between the steel part and the concrete part should be present in the current design. However the old designed steel-concrete bridge decks show proven bearing capacity, so the feeling is that there is a lot of hidden bearing capacity in this type of historical bridge decks. Renovation can be avoided, which saves a lot of money and hindrance for the inhabitants of Amsterdam. To get more insight information of the bearing capacity of the historical bridge decks some in-situ load tests combined with nonlinear analysis were planned to setup an additional part for the recommendation for existing steel-concrete bridge decks.
