Many of the existing old railway bridges giving service on Turkish railway network, which by conventional theoretical standards are not capable of carrying the heavy vehicles of current railway traffic, are indeed carrying these vehicles with no apparent signs of distress. The obvious reason for this, is the large differences between the actual load carrying capacities of bridges and those predicted by conventional theory. These old railway bridges, however, have finite capacities and this difference can not be relied upon indiscriminately. To get the maximum use out of a bridge, its assessed load carrying capacity should be safely close to its actual capacity. Bridge testing provides a much needed means of correctly assessing the strength of an existing bridge. Thus, the main objectives of the project are to developed efficient bridge testing procedures and data evaluation methods that can be used on a routine basis to quantify the behavior of railway bridges, to detect existing structural damages, and to make predictions about their actual load carrying capacity. Additional major concern is the potential fatigue damage that has accumulated in these old railway bridges. Consequently, another important task of the project is to predict the reserve fatigue life of these bridges. In order to do this, analytical and experimental procedure have been developed and a set of full scale fatigue tests, to be carried out on selected bridge members, are planned. For this purpose a modern fatigue laboratory, capable to support fatigue tests on full scale bridge members, has been equiped. |
|
