UIC Project on assessment , inspection and maintenance of masonry arch railway bridges

Masonry arch bridges represent a large proportion of the railway bridge stock. Many of them belong to the civil engineering heritage of the railways, therefore their management require careful consideration. Maintenance strategies should promote solutions that are directed towards their preservation and restoration by relying on their existing structural capacity and give preference to stabilization rather than their substitution or replacement. The paper introduces the results of an international project entitled “Improving assessment, optimization of maintenance and development of database for masonry arch railway bridges”. The project is organised by the International Union of Railways (UIC) with the participation of 14 railway administrations and many consultant institutions, spanning a period of 4 years. The principle objective of the project is to collect and develop tools that help optimising the life-cycle management of masonry arch bridges, help reducing their maintenance costs and promote an effective exchange of good practice between the railway administrations. 4 ARCH’07 – 5th International Conference on Arch Bridges 1.2 Project description A study group was set up in 2002 by the International Union of Railways (UIC) in order to establish information on the ‘state-of-the-art’ of masonry arch railway bridges. The work was initiated by the Hungarian Railways and during the preparatory stage 13 more railway organisations joined the project. Currently the following railway administrations are involved in the project: MAV (Hungary, task leader) DB (Germany), SNCF (France), NR (UK), ÖBB (Austria), SBB (Switzerland), JBV (Norway), CD (Czech Republic), REFER (Portugal), RENFE (Spain), RFI (Italy), JapanRail-RTRI (Japan), PKP (Poland), IR (India). The work is carried out in close collaboration between the partaking railway administrations and consultant institutions from various countries such as: Obvis Ltd. (UK), University of Sheffield (UK), Ines Ingenieros Consultores (Spain), University of Genoa (Italy), Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland), Ingenieurbüro A. Pauser (Austria), Hochschule Bremen (Germany), Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic), University of Pécs and Orisoft Engineering Consulting (Hungary). The project has been divided into two phases. The preparatory phase the masonry arch bridge stock has been reviewed and the state-of-the-art practices of their assessment, inspection and maintenance summarised. It has been concluded that there were no internationally accepted tools available for the reliable assessment of the load carrying capacity of masonry arch bridges and that a lack of guidance has retarded the widespread application of up-to-date inspection and maintenance procedures. The objectives and tasks of the follow-up phase have been put together according to the conclusions of this preparatory phase. The following work packages have been identified in the programme: WP1: Development of assessment tools for masonry arch bridges. WP2: Optimised inspection and monitoring of masonry arch bridges. WP3: Optimised maintenance and repair of masonry arch bridges. WP4: Development of Information Database for masonry arch bridges. The project is funded over a period of 4 years starting from January 2003. Guides have been developed for the assessment, inspection and maintenance of masonry arch bridges. An Information System & Database has been developed on the Internet to be a reservoir for knowledge on masonry arch bridges and to provide a platform for the railway administrations to consult and share information. The main deliverables of the project are summarized in Table 1. Table 1 : Summary of work-packages and deliverables WP1: Assessment WP2: Inspection & Monitoring WP3: Maintenance & Repair WP4: Database Revision of the MEXE method & development of new simple assessment tools Guide to the testing of material properties by destructive methods Expert tool for the degradation modelling of masonry arch bridges Development of computerized module for arch assessment Guide to NonDestructive Testing Methods Guide to the execution and control of repairs