White Rose Station, Footbridge check

The Challenge

As the two footbridges (three-span and two-span) underwent uplift on their respective bearings, the category of checking for these was elevated to a Cat III, meaning the design completed by Spencer required a full independent review by a commercially independent design house. As per the criteria for a Cat III check, GGP were only issued final drawings and no reference to the original calculations was to be made, meaning GGP conducted a full design of the two bridges.

The design considered:-

• Steel Design
• Connection Design
• Fatigue Check
• Dynamic Analysis/Comfort Analysis

All of these checks were carried out to the latest Eurocode Guidance.

To make this more complicated, the bridges were ready to install, therefore timing was key to not delaying the project.

The Solution

A 3D structural model was built for both bridges and checked to all relevant codes. As the two bridges were different regarding the number of spans and the bearings used, they were deemed suitably separate structures. GGP utilised two engineers working in tandem to carry out all relevant checks for each bridge.

Robot Structural Analysis was used to conduct static steel design, natural frequency and dynamic excitation analysis, as well as fatigue checks. Idea Statica were used for connection design.

The Result

Our Cat III check indicated that the original design carried out by Spencer Engineering was adequate, and GGP signed the design off as approved Cat III checker.