World’s First UHPFRC Trough Railway Bridge in Switzerland

On the TRAVYS railway line between Yverdon and St. Croix, the world's first railway trough bridge made of ultra-high performance fibre-reinforced concrete ( UHPFRC) was put into operation in August 2021. Thanks to the high strength of the UHPFRC of over 180 MPa, the entire bridge deck was produced with a thickness of just 6-24 cm. This made it possible to fulfil several project requirements, such as the limited space available between the carriageway and the cantonal road below.

The overpass consists of a railway track, including a metric track, two pedestrian bridges, which have a total width of 5.8m and a total length of 6.6m, and two prefabricated support benches made of reinforced concrete. The latter were placed on existing abutment walls. When laying the prefabricated elements, care had to be taken to ensure that everything fitted with millimetre precision.

A technical paper entitled "Experimental investigation of a keying joint cast in UHPFRC between precast UHPFRC bridge elements" describing the full-scale laboratory experiment to validate the keying joint suitability for railway brifges which was specifically done for this project. This paper was published in  "Materials and Structures", the flagship publication of the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures. The paper can be viewed at the following address:

A second paper was published for the IABSE symposium in Prague in 2022 entitled "Short Span UHPFRC railway bridge in Switzerland - from design to implementation":

Prague2022proceedings (epfl.ch)