Sustainable increase of lifespan for bridges

Background

Large amount of resources has been invested in building and maintaining existing bridges. Over 50% of existing steel bridges are older than 50 years. As freight volumes are increasing and axle loads are getting heavier several of these elderly structures do not meet the requirements of today. 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.

Elderly structures often have an over capacity due to safe-side assumptions in the design phase, compared with the sophisticated tools that can be used today. In this project we are investigating ways to evaluate existing bridges in more accurate ways in order to find the right measures to take from a sustainable point of view. One way for doing this is to perform measurements on these existing bridges, so called structural health monitoring. By measuring the real structural behaviour it is possible to determine if the structure has enough capacity.

Bridges found to have insufficient safety level are not necessarily needed to be replaced; possibilities to improve the capacity of structures by repairs and strengthening are also investigated.

Financing:

Trafikverket | Hjalmar Lundbohm Research Center | LKAB