Two Steel Bridges for the High Speed Railway line Madrid-Barcelona-French Border

Two steel bridges have been recently completed on the high speed railway (HSR) line connecting Madrid, Barcelona and the French Border (Perpignan). Both structures cross over existing infrastructures with a limited vertical clearance in order to reduce environmental impact. The conceptual design is similar for the two structures: a composite steel-concrete deck suspended on steel tied curved members. An innovative solution, at least for the Spanish HSR lines, that has been used in the past in concrete road bridges. These bridges are two of the three first steel structures built for the HSR in Spain. This paper synthesises the design, structural behaviour and construction of these bridges near the city of Barcelona, Spain:

• Llinars Bridge crosses, at a very high skew angle, one of the busiest highways (AP-7) in Spain. This viaduct has an overall length of 574 with a maximum span of 75 m.
• Sant Boi Bridge crosses several existing infrastructures (highway, road and railway). The overall length of the bridge is 870 m with a maximum span of 63 m.