The Chair of Conceptual & Structual Design offers our industry partners the opportunity of collaborations and in recent years, large scale projects have been conducted with several leading  firms in the industry.

In this undertaking the fatigue strength of a turn-around saddle for pre-stressed cables was successfully tested. The saddle developed by VSL required for a general allowance of proof of fatigue strength in accordance with the requirements of fib recommendations (bulletin n° 30 from Januar 2005).

The saddle with 55-strands was tested under a dynamic load of 2-million cycles with upper limit equal to 45% of the ultimate tensile load. Conduction of this test had some very special requirements. An experiment of this scale was not possible to be carried out anywhere in the world for a very long time. For this reason TU Berlin developed a special setup, on which the saddle could be tested.

After the end of the fatigue strength test a tensile test with 95% of GUTS was carried out, which satisfied the fib-Requirements.

In this undertaking the fatigue strength of a 6-37 turn-around saddle with SSI-Systems was investigated. The saddle made by VSL was loaded  2 million times corresponding to the requirement, with stress corresponding to 60% of the guarantied strain at fracture. After the fatigue test a tension test with 95% of the ultimate strain (GUTS) was carried out. This test was also concluded successfully.