Beam Bridge Basics – Tendons, Construction Stages and Design

Bridge design can get complex quickly. Starting with the basic workflow on a simple beam bridge example make sense to get familiar with the basic input of tendons, construction stages and the design.

The shared video will guide you through the basics of designing a post-tensioned beam bridge. Although the example shows a two-span bridge, the concept can be used for any other beam bridge. This is one of the advantages of using AutoCAD as graphical pre-processor for modelling.

The following topics a will be covered.

  • Tendons for Beams
    • Prestressing System
    • Graphical definition of tendons
  • Construction Stages
    • Assign group numbers to stages
    • Check assigned group numbers
    • Create a construction sequence
    • Pre-Camber Analysis
  • Design
    • Design the Bridge using the Construction Stage Manager Tasks

To learn how to create a beam bridge using the parametric input check Basics of Modelling a Parametric Beam Bridge.

For more Bridge tutorials check the official SOFiSTiK online tutorials version 2018.
For more Bridge tutorials check the official SOFiSTiK online tutorials version 2020.

Software version: SOFiSTiK FEA v2018-03.