Engineering challenges from assessment of Schalkwijksebrug

Structural assessments of eight steel arch bridges, originally built between 1934 and 1976, are performed in a large Design & Construct project which involves the refurbishment of eight bridges for road traffic over the Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal. The aim of the project is to obtain a technical life time extension of at least 30 years for the bridges with minimal obstruction of road and naval traffic during execution of the works. Usually existing old bridges will not meet all requirements for new design when the design codes for new structures are applied without any adjustments.

This paper describes engineering principles and advanced calculation methods successfully applied for the assessments of the Schalkwijksebrug. These principles and methods differ from those usually applied in designing new bridge structures and may be applied for assessment of other existing bridges in order to prevent unnecessary rejection and obtain life time extension of the structure.