Real Material Properties of Weathering Steels Used in Bridge Structures

The article contains a statistical evaluation of the real material properties of weathering steels used for the construction of motorway bridges in the Czech Republic between 2001 and 2007. The evaluation is performed for a range of hot rolled plates made of S355J2W steel. There is an evaluation of the strength properties, plasticity properties and impact properties of the steel and its chemical composition. The article also contains derived real values of partial factors of materials corresponding to the relevant reliability classes RC1 to RC3 pursuant to the European standard EN 1990.