The safety of existing bridges may be assessed using data from monitoring. The fatigue damage induced during observation period is extrapolated to the total service duration of a structure, and the reserve capacity is estimated. However, due to the randomn ...
Riveted railway bridges are commonly considered as being “old”, having fatigue damage and are therefore replaced. While this practice should be by now obsolete by using novel engineering methods like structural monitoring, prolongation of the service durat ...
This two-part article reports on the renewal and adaptation of the fixed railway track in the heavily frequented underground train station at Zurich Airport. The fixed track built in 1980 had reached the service duration predicted by the system provider an ...
The geometry of the railway track is degraded under traffic load, and must be maintained periodically. This degradation is due to the arrangement of ballast particles under loads and vibrations, which results into irreversible plastic settlements. Tamping ...
Approximately 25 percent of the budget for the maintenance and renewal of railway tracks –in Switzerland more than a billion Swiss Francs– is used for the switches (points) and crossings (S&C). While in the mean time the budget expenditure for the maintena ...
This paper analyses the influence of monitoring duration on the obtained results using two long term (2.5 years) monitoring campaigns. Two road bridges with different nature of traffic are considered: (a) a heavily loaded two-lane highway viaduct and (b) a ...
The aim of this thesis is to provide rational engineering methods for the fatigue safety examination of existing railway bridges. Increasing railway traffic loading and enhanced structural analysis allow for higher exploitation of the capacity of bridge el ...