ÖBB Steyrtalbrücke - Belastungsprobe und Langzeitmessungen

ÖBB Steyrtalbridge - Load test and long term measurements

At km 65,621 of the railroad track between Linz and Selzthal the Steyrtalbridge was rebuilt in the years 2013 and 2014. The essential design criterion from the client ÖBB Infrastruktur AG was the endeavor of an optimized bridge under consideration of life-cylce-cost, which among other things despite a bridge length of 182 m can be designed without high-maintenance breather switches.
Based on the current standards and certain design flexibilities, which are allowed in the codes special ways and techniques were used to calculate the rail tension. With this results of the rail-structure-interaction it was possible to design without breather switches.
As consequence of the assumptions in the planning process it was necessary to make comprehensive measurements which shall give information of the real behavior of the bridge and compare them with the assumptions and results of the static calculation. Therefor static and dynamic load test were performed before opening to regular traffic. In addition long term measurements were carried out to evaluate the load-bearing behavior over time and to confirm the calculation approaches for the verification of the rail-structure-interaction.
In this article the planning of the monitoringsystem, the implementation and results of the load test and the following long term measurements are illustrated.