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A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide valley, road, river, or other low-lying terrain features and obstacles. The term viaduct is derived from the Latin via meaning "road", and ducere meaning "to lead". It is a 19th-century derivation from an analogy with ancient Roman aqueducts. Like the Roman aqueducts, many early viaducts comprised a series of arches of roughly equal length. Over land The longest in antiquity may have been the Pont Serme which crossed wide marshes in southern France. At its longest point, it measured 2,679 meters with a width of 22 meters. Viaducts are commonly used in many cities that are railroad hubs, such as Chicago, Birmingham, London and Manchester. These viaducts cross the large railroad yards that are needed for freight trains

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Acoustic emission and ultrasonic testing for fatigue damage detection in a RC bridge deck slab

Imane Bayane, Eugen Brühwiler

There is a significant need to examine precisely the conditions of concrete road bridges because of the increasing traffic and axle loads and the fact that most existing bridges were not designed with respect to fatigue. In-situ investigations are challenging in terms of long-term monitoring of deformations and displacements, the difficulty of access to relevant zones of bridges in service, and limitations in current measurement methods and techniques. This paper presents the case study of a specifically designed continuous monitoring system, installed in the reinforced-concrete slab of a 60-year road viaduct, in order to detect possible initial fatigue damaging events due to traffic loading, since the slab currently does not show any sign of fatigue damage in terms of cracks. The originality of the paper lies in the combination and synchronization of four nondestructive-testing techniques, i.e. an acoustic emission system, an ultrasonic system, strain gauges, and thermocouples, to perform long-term monitoring of the RC deck slab of this viaduct under service conditions. It is found that the monitoring system is efficient to detect acoustic emission parameters as a function of traffic and temperature variations.

2019

Quantification of the conditional value of SHM data for the fatigue safety evaluation of a road viaduct

Imane Bayane, Eugen Brühwiler

Fatigue safety verification of existing bridges that uses ‘‘re-calculation’’ based on codes, usually results in insufficient fatigue safety, triggering invasive interventions. Instead of “re-calculation”, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) should be used for the assessment of the existing bridges. Monitoring systems provide data that can reduce uncertainties associated with the fatigue loading process and the structural resistance. The objective of this paper is to quantify the value of the SHM system implemented in a 60-years-old road viaduct to investigate its fatigue safety, through modeling of the fundamental decisions of performing monitoring in conjunction with its expected utility. The quantification of the conditional value of information is based on the decision tree analysis that considers the structural reliability, various decision scenarios as well as the cost-benefit assessments. This leads to a quantitative decision basis for the owner about how much time and money can be saved while the viaduct fulfills its function reliably and respects the safety requirements. The originality of this paper stands in the application of the value of information theory to an existing viaduct considering the fatigue failure of the system based on the monitoring data and the cost-benefit of monitoring method.

2019

Investigation of fatigue damage in a RC deck slab due to moving loads through long-term monitoring of a road viaduct

Imane Bayane, Eugen Brühwiler

The behavior of reinforced-concrete structural elements under moving loads involves many complex parameters related to material properties, vehicle loading, environmental changes and structural response. It is difficult to generate the real conditions of loading when performing laboratory tests or numerical simulations. Due to these difficulties, many uncertainties and non-conclusive results prevail. This paper presents a fatigue-monitoring concept to evaluate the cracking activity of a reinforced-concrete slab of an existing road viaduct under moving loads. Both steel rebars and concrete of the deck slab were instrumented and are being monitored continuously. The monitoring system comprises strain gauges to measure the strain in the rebars and acoustic emission (AE) system to evaluate the AE activity of the concrete under traffic loading. Parametric study of AE features and b-value analysis were performed to quantify six weeks of acoustic emission data. Results show that the AE activity is due to the opening and closing of microcracks. The monitoring system indicates successfully on-site the activity of microcracks in concrete when subjected to stress reversals due to passing vehicles.

Taylor & Francis2021

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