Waagner-Biro Group overview

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Special Services

Waagner-Biro Stahlbau offers a complete service range for maintenance, refurbishment and repairs to existing steel bridge structures: raising, salvage, disassembly and removal of bridges. Protection of users and workers, and the bridge structure during raising or widening while simultaneously minimising traffic interruptions is a technical challenge. Waagner-Biro has successfully raised and widened a series of steel bridges.

Range of Services:

  • Basic and detail engineering
  • Static calculations
  • Renewed investigation of carrying capability of bridge support structures
  • Life time calculation and analysis
  • Checking productions from third party companies
  • Quality control
  • Assembly supervision
  • Checking bearings, coatings, weld seams and bridge equipment
  • Consulting
  • Training

Fly-Over ramp
H-piles
Bridge raising

Fly-Over Ramp

Fly-Over ramp South East Tangent

The Fly-Over ramp – as a "bridge over the bridge" – used for uninterrupted replacements of expansion joints and for implementing repairs has garnered an excellent reputation since 1999 at various locations. Many roadway expansion structures installed in the past decades are currently greatly damaged by mechanical effects. It is therefore necessary to replace the damaged mechanical structures with finger expansion sections. Because repairs and the related closure of individual lanes lead to enormous diversions and huge traffic jams, the idea of using a ramp was born. The engineers at Waagner-Biro took on the challenge and developed the Fly-Over ramp which was used for the first time in 1999 on the south-east tangent. The necessary width can be achieved by arranging individual elements in parallel. The Fly-Over ramp can therefore be extended indefinitely.

Technical specifications (overview)

Individual element:
Width: 3.35m
Length: 4.5m
Weight: 2.6t
Working height: 1.9m

Overall structure of Fly-Over ramp with three lanes:
Total width: 10m
Total length: 106m
Total weight: 227t

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H-Piles

H-piles Philippines

Steel is not only the best material for bridge support structures with long life, steel can also be used for the foundations in the form of H-piles.

H-piles consist of the following components:

      • Pile head with supports for the bridge main bearings and horizontal buffers against wind and earthquake forces
      • Steel piles with H-profile cross-sections which are driven into the ground
      • Access ramp (optional) for accepting the various settling behaviours of the earth dam and the support structure.


      The advantages of the H-pile system from Waagner-Biro are:

        • Rapid and simple assembly
        • Easy transport and low weight of steel components
        • None or very little concrete work at the building site
        • Flexible use for various ground and load relationshipsHot dip galvanised pile heads and head piles protected by paint guarantee long useful life

        The H-pile system is available in two standard formations for various site and load conditions:

        • H-piles, light for span widths up to 35 m:
          Pile heads + 2 access ramps + 16 vertical H-piles per bridge
        • H-piles, heavy for span widths up to 60 m:
          Pile heads + 2 access ramps + 24 vertical H-piles per bridge

        The selection of the H-pile system format is mainly dependent on the magnitude of the horizontal load (wind and earthquakes) and on the local ground characteristics.

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        Bridge Raising

        Bridge raising Praterbridge

        Raising bridges is a logistical challenge: Traffic blockages and diversion costs must be avoided through precise planning. The technology used today for lifting procedures is based on the use of cable lifters. The lifting procedure is implemented by pulling up the load hanging on the cables. A cable lifter is essentially a punch press, through which one or more steel cables (stranded bundle) on which the load is suspended is passed. Complicated stacking can be omitted. An auxiliary structure must be set up to support the cable lifter.

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