Head of the project: doc. Ing. Odrobiňák Jaroslav, PhD.

Research team: prof. Ing. Vičan Josef, CSc., Ing. Farbák Matúš, PhD., Ing. Hlinka Richard, PhD., Ing. Prokop Jozef, PhD.

Duration: Janury 2024 – December 2026                             

The aim of the project is to deepen knowledge about the real behavior of selected structural solutions, elements and structural details of existing steel bridge structures in order to increase the reliability and residual service life of existing bridge structures. The ambition of the project is to analyze and understand the real action of structural elements and details (with and without failures) that are identified as critical, limiting the durability or service life of bridges, through a suitable combination of targeted experimental measurements and modern numerical methods. It will be necessary to pay attention to relevant failures, such as cracks and corrosion processes in particular, and to analyze their impact on the reliability and load capacity of bridge structures in operation, including their influence on the transient nature of operational loads. For the above-mentioned goals, in addition to state-of-the-art equipment for experimental and numerical analyses, a unique portfolio of knowledge from previously solved research tasks, which is available to the research team, will also be used.

Head of the project: prof. Ing. Koteš Peter, PhD.   

Research team: prof. Ing. Moravčík Martin, PhD., doc. Ing. Bujňáková Petra, PhD., Ing. Vavruš Martin, PhD., Ing. Kraľovanec Jakub, PhD., Ing. Zahuranec Michal, PhD., Ing. Potočníková Alena, PhD.

Duration: Janury 2024 – December 2026                             

Concrete and concrete structures are among the most widely used in the world. For this reason, increasing demands are being placed on concrete. Therefore, its properties (mechanical, chemical and physical) are being improved and refined. New requirements in construction practice are met by high-performance concretes (HPC). These concretes include high-strength concretes, fibre concretes, high-strength fibre concretes, etc. Despite the fact that quite a lot is already known about them, they are not yet commonly used in practice in the Slovak environment. The aim of the project is to start using local resources for their production as much as possible and to adapt them to the Slovak conditions. This means designing such recipes that Slovak producers will be able to produce them. At the same time, the project will verify their use in the production of new elements, or in the reconstruction of existing elements. The project will use experimental measurements on samples in the laboratory and numerical modelling.

Head of the project: prof. Ing. Moravčík Martin, PhD.   

Research team: doc. Ing. Koteš Peter, PhD., Ing. Kotula Patrik, PhD., Ing. Bahleda František, PhD., Ing. Bujňáková Petra, PhD., Ing. Vavruš Martin, PhD., Ing. Kraľovanec Jakub, PhD.

Duration: Janury 2022 – December 2024                             

At present, the aging infrastructure of the road and railway network, of which concrete bridges are an integral part, appears to be one of the key problems that significantly affects the state budgets of the countries of the European Union. In the near past, we have witnessed the tragic event of the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, Italy, with catastrophic consequences. We can record a similar situation in our country, when there are several emergency situations on bridges almost every year. e.g. Podbiel bridge 2015, bridge over VN Ružín 2017, Trstená bridge 2019, bridge at Kysak 2020 and so on. These are all prestressed bridges built in the 50's and 60's. It turns out that this condition is influenced by fundamental factors that can be defined as an insufficient level of prestress diagnostics in the structure. Therefore, our project is focused on the possibility of monitoring and determining the current level of prestress in the structure, using new theoretical and experimental progressive methods.

Head of the project: prof. Ing. Vičan Josef, CSc.

Research team: doc. Ing. Odrobiňák Jaroslav, PhD., Ing. Gocál Jozef, PhD., Ing. Hlinka Richard, PhD., Ing. Farbák Matúš, PhD., Ing. Prokop Jozef, PhD.

Duration: january 2021 – December 2023                             

The steel load-bearing structures of bridges show a number of details with the potential for failures. Whether it is riveted structures, with details verified by service, or more modern welded load-bearing structures with a number of known and newer details causing more or less serious failures. These are usually joints of elements within the load bearing structural system, where welds are a very effective type of connection from the realization point of view, but with a significant potential for the occurrence of dangerous failures, especially fatigue cracks. Although a large number of details causing possible failures are known and documented in standards for fatigue verification, their impact on global analysis as well as on the reliability and serviceability of the bridge is not explored. Especially the uniform systematization of details and failures with their impact on behaviour of the system in service and the transition ability of the service load is not processed. The presented project has set itself the goal to process this issue and provide data for elaboration of a catalogue of failures of steel bridges.