Structural health monitoring of a concrete bridge in Sweden

Over the past decade the interests in upgrading, assessment and maintenance of our ageing infrastructure has grown avalanche-like. The main reason is economical aspects but also reasons due to accessibility environmental consideration play a vital role. Recently the Swedish and Norwegian Railway Association decided to upgrade the Iron Ore Line "Malmbanan", a railway line for transportation of iron from northern Sweden to the coasts of Norway and Sweden. Here the owner wanted to increase the axle loads from 25 to 30 tons to reduce the transportation costs. In one of the cases, the Luossajokk Bridge, a recalculation according to design codes showed that the increased axle loads would exceed the yield limit in the reinforcement. Before any decision was taken regarding strengthening or replacing the bridge an assessment with probabilistic methods was used. It appeared that the bridge could carry the higher load with a safety index β ≥ 4.7 for reasonable assumptions of the load distributions. A measurement system was installed to check the real worst placement of the new iron ore locomotive (IORE), and the actually level of strains in the reinforcement for the worst load case1. It was shown that the strain level was far from critical and that the evaluated worst placement of the locomotive was almost correct. To assure a reliable transportation a long term monitoring program was arranged to check the development of strains with time. Examples from the probabilistic evaluation and the monitoring of the bridge are given and discussed.