• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.3D
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• pp.499-509
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• 2006

Precast concrete deck has many advantages comparing with the in-situ concrete deck, and has been successfully applied to replacement of the deteriorated decks and to the newly constructed highway bridges in domestic region. In order to apply the precast decks into the railway bridges, however, differences of the load characteristics between the highway and the railway should be properly taken into account including the train load, longitudinal force of the continuous welded rail, acceleration or braking force, temperature change and shrinkage. Proper level of the longitudinal prestress of the tendons that can ensure integrity of the transverse joints in the deck system is of a primary importance. To this aim, the longitudinal tensile stresses induced by the design loads are derived using three-dimensional finite element analyses for the frequently adopted PSC composite girder railway bridge. The effect of the temperature change is also investigated considering the design codes and theoretical equations in an in-depth manner. The estimated proper prestress level to counteract those tensile stresses is above 2.4 MPa, which is similar to the case of the highway bridges.