The new railway bridge over the Neckar was built as part of the construction of the new Stuttgart main station to connect the city and long-distance railway to the routes leading north and east. It is designed as a composite steel structure with a longitudinal supporting structure consisting of three steel longitudinal girders, arranged on the outside and in the middle of the superstructure, in combination with the so-called “steel sails” that support the longitudinal girders. The reinforced concrete deck slab is composite with the regularly arranged cross beams. Particular attention was paid to the design of the steel sails. Through shape optimization and parameter studies, the sheet thicknesses of the sails and the steel longitudinal beams could be reduced to a minimum. High-strength fine-grained steel is used in the area of the sails’ connections to the steel masts, which are subject to tensile stress. One special design detail is the series of slender columns, nine of which are used to transfer the horizontal braking forces of the trains.
The construction was carried out in close proximity to the existing bridge, which is still in operation, and was built over traffic on the waterway, a road and railroad tracks.
