Thermal behaviour of a concrete cable-stayed bridge in Algeria

Abstract

The Salah Bey Viaduct located in the city of Constantine, Algeria, is a cable-stayed bridge with a total length of 756 m and a 259 m main span. Its two pylons have a total height of 130 m and the deck is a prestressed box-girder 3.75 m high with large lateral cantilevers. A comprehensive structural health monitoring system was set up during construction, including a large number of sensors and covering different aspects, as the weather conditions or the static, dynamic and seismic structural behaviours. Since the environmental conditions in Constantine involve large daily and seasonal thermal amplitudes, this paper has the purpose to characterize these thermal variations and to analyse its structural effects.