TEAM Project – Marie Curie Initial Training
Duration : 01.11.2009 – 31.10.2012
Supervisor : Professor Eugen Brühwiler
PhD student : Mark Treacy
Reliability based verification of structural and fatigue safety of bridges considering data from WIM
To achieve more sustainable infrastructure, bridge owners strive to maximise the lifetimes of existing structures whilst minimising interventions. Conversely, unprecedented increases in heavy traffic volumes over the past few decades raises concerns as to the structural and fatigue safety of numerous existing bridges constructed in the last century. Safety verification based solely on codified load models can often be conservative and lead to unnecessary works.
As existing bridges permit the possibility of directly measuring the induced action effects, latest sensor technologies must be exploited to assess problematic details. This research focuses on developing techniques for safety verification based on measured action effects (e.g. strain in bridge elements). The techniques will be developed using data obtained from road bridges in Switzerland instrumented with Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems. Improved methodologies for safety verification combining measurements and numerical simulation are to be developed. Weigh-in-motion (WIM) results are to be used as load input for global safety verification.
