Understanding Morandi's Post-Stressed Concrete Cable Stays

by Kristian Hasenjäger
(http://www.retrofutur.org/retrofutur/app/main?DOCID=1000116030)

Riccardo Morandi, the lead engineer of the Polcevera Viaduct, was one of the rare
engineers to employ post-stressed concrete cable stays in bridges. It made me curious to
learn about the reasons, and to learn how the system functions. First look on Pylon 9:

Pylon 9: The cable stay consists of two distinct stays in their lower part which merge half way up
towards the tower (Hasen 2015)

Let us consider two cross-sections of those cable stays:

Two cable stay cross sections. 24 A-cables and 28 B-cables (Miranda 1968)

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In the drawing above, the right cross-section is located somewhere in the upper part of the
cable stay, towards the top of the pylon. The cross-section to the left is located in the
lower part: In fact there are two superimposed cable stay packs that merge further up.
Adding complexity to the static system, esp. in the long run.

Also notice the cross section drawings show cables of two different diameters: Thicker A-
cables and thinner B-cables. Both have very different functions and assembly modes:

The stronger A cables were first lined and tightened, supporting weight of the box-type
cantilever carriageway at their ends. So there was no concrete around them yet.
Therefore, no precise Pre-stressing was possible at this point. This will be done in a next
step with the B-cables, which I'll explain hereafter.

The photo below shows this construction phase: Two sets of 12 inner A-cables have been
spanned, still without the concrete boxing around them, but already supporting the
cantilever carriageway.

24 raw A-cables supporting part of the cantilever deck, prior to concrete casting
(Miranda 1968).

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In a further construction step precast concrete box elements have been appended along
the inner A-cables, filled with concrete and finally pre-stressed by 28 outer B-cables.

Precast concrete box elements are being attached to the main A-cables of Capriano Viaduct
around 1977 . The elements will later be filled with concrete and then post-stressed with additional
B-cables (Sala 2016).

It may be adequate to note that the outer B-cables were those that were mechanically
post-stressed to keep the concrete girder under constant compression. And therefore
resulting in a post-stressed beam.

Morandi thought that loading major tension on the outer B cables and less tension on the
inner A-cables would reduce mechanical wear and tear of the "main" A-cables. The
tension applied to the outer B-cables should be only as tight as to just support the
maximum bridge load (= road vehicles). Remember that only the tension of the outer B-
cables could be precisely calibrated during construction phase.

However, a major problem arose: After the concrete box around the cables was
constructed, the resulting sag and weight induced lengthening changed the already fixed
effective (=straight) length. Therefore the carriageway was not (and would never be)
horizontally well-levelled. In the later years it seemed they tried to level out the
carriageway box girder by adjusting the "V" abutments (which I don't understand how this
would have been possible).

In addition to this, a series of further challenges needed to be taken into account, some of
them could have contributed to the recent bridge failure:

 Because the post-stressed concrete beam is very thin in relation to its length, and also
because of the noticeable sag (see side views of the bridge), the compression that could
be applied to it was rather limited. Miranda knew this very well: Applying too much
compression through the B-cables would have resulted in non controllable destructive
effects.
So, and this is a bit astonishing, Miranda has chosen the B-cables to be tensioned for a
low compression range from nearly zero compression (at fully loaded carriageway) to a
rather low positive value (when empty carriageway).
 In other words: From the very beginning, the stays were not compressed as tight like
conventional pre-stressed beams (i.e. of bridges). Their positive attributes therefore do
not fully apply to Morandi's pres-stressed cable strays.

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 Adding to this, during years of operation, highly tensioned cables are inevitably exposed
to the phenomenon of relaxation, a loss of tension occurs. Therefore also compression in
the concrete stray decreases over time until reaching a critical point, total relaxation.
 Unfortunately low/zero longitudinal compression in a thin beam makes it prone to
cracks, rapid degeneration and intrusion of water. It is likely pylon 11 reached this state
before it was strengthened.
 The similar Carpineto Viaduct, built 10 years after the Polcevera Viaduct, suffered the
problem of total relaxation as well and was therefore thoroughly assessed and modeled
(FEM) around 2013 by Della Sala et al.

Longitudinal compression in concrete post-stressed stay beam of similar Carpineto

Viaduct. After initial tensioning in 1977 pressure was set to 7.53 MPa (77 kg/cm²),
which decreased more than half to around 3 MPa until 2013. Under heavy load
operation, the longitudinal compression would fall below zero, resulting in rapid
degeneration and putting stability at risk (Sala 2016 - modified to include English
translations)

 Because the steel cables are bonded to the surrounding concrete, small cracks in the
concrete inevitably lead to corrosion and additional wear.
 Because the cables can not be inspected as they are immersed in concrete, corrosive
effects and single wire strand failure can not be detected.
In more modern designs, to enable constant monitoring, cables are electrically insulated
so that single wire failures can be detected by changes of electric resistance of the cable.
 Neither can the current compression in the concrete be measured easily.
 So both low tension and high tension need to be avoided in the concrete beams, and
therefore a very wise range of post-stressing forces to be determined and applied during
planning and construction, with possible re-calibrations later.

Because of steel relaxation and concrete viscosity, cable tension needs to be monitored
in adequate intervals and, if necessary, re-calibrated. Unfortunately, neither effective
monitoring nor re-tensioning is possible in the Genova design. The lack of precise,
thorough and continuous monitoring possibilities (corrosion, wire strand failures, concrete
compression) is not a helpful feature and may lead to unobserved critical degeneration.

Around 1993 pylon 11 received twelve additional external reinforcements cables to

mitigate some of the above issues:

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Pylon 11: External reinforcement cables installed 1992-1994. (Hasen 2007)

Several challenges arose:

One major problem was that the tension applied to those additional cables should not
increase the total combined compression of the thin concrete beam. Applying additional
pressure would have been likely to damage the thin concrete beam structure. The
successfully applied solution could be summarized as extremely complex: It consisted in
cutting a section of the old concrete beam to also cut the old cables inside while
subsequently applying more tension to the new external cables.

Pylon 11: Additional reinforcement cables anchoring, cutting of existing cables (Malverde 2010)

Concluding postscript:

I examined a number of articles about structural analysis and repair of Morandi type
bridges, by different authors and Riccardo Morandi himself. Riccardo Morandi gave three
main reasons for the Polcevera concrete cable stay choice:

1. To create a rigid bridge frame, consisting pylons (interlaced A-Antennas and V pylons),
cable stays and the bridge deck. This would also reduce vertical movement of the
cantilever bridge deck on changing (traffic) load and therefore reduction of torsion at its
fixed end.

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2. To lower stress on the inner A-cables
3. To protect the steel cables from meteorological and chemical effects

It could be interesting to observe that most other authors give rather different explanations
why Morandi might have chosen this particular design. This diverging spectrum may be an
evidence that there might not be a substantial rational argument in favour of the concrete-
cable stays design when considering its draw-backs.

It must be noted that the cable stays of the very similar Lake Maracaibo bridge in
Venezuela are not poured into a concrete beam.

Maracaibo Bridge in Venezuela after completion in 1962. The bundled cable stays are not
poured into concrete beams (Casado 1962).

This is even more interesting when considering that the Maracaibo bridge (1957-1961)
has been conceived five years before the Polcevera (1962-1966) bridge.

Maracaibo Bridge in Venezuela after

completion in 1962. The bundled cable
stays are not poured into concrete
beams (Casado 1962).

Morandi must have decided to abandon the simple steel cable layout around 1962 in
favour of the more complex post-stressed concrete beam design.

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