Assessment and full scale failure test of a steel truss bridge

Large amount of resources has been invested in maintaining existing infrastructure. Several of these structures are now becoming old and do not meet the requirements of today or are reaching the end of their lifecycle. It is not possible to replace all of these structures that are deemed or are about to be deemed obsolete, due to high cost and environmental impacts.

One way to keep these structures in use for a longer time is innovative and intelligent assessment of the actual state of stress and behaviour. In such cases, using structural health monitoring to assess the structure might be an efficient way to extend the life of the structure.

This paper will describe a unique monitoring program over two similar 33 m long steel truss bridges situated in Sweden. One of these bridges, Aby River, has a regulated axle load of 25 tons and is deemed to have reached is end of life due to fatigue. The other bridge, Rautasjokk, has a regulated axle load of 30 tons but will be in use for the coming years.

The monitoring program has the following outline; monitoring of the bridge over Aby river when it is in service, after replacement this bridge will be moved and tested under static loads to assess boundary conditions and state of stress, then parts of this bridge will be disassembled and these parts will be tested in laboratory environment for fatigue life assessment, all of these results will then be controlled by monitoring of the bridge over Rautasjokk in service limit state.

The outline of this project will give input for the fatigue life models that are used today and probably upgrade the fatigue life of the bridge over Rautasjokk.