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Synthetic rating system for railway bridge management

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Abstract

Railway bridges deteriorate with age. Factors such as environmental effects on different materials of a bridge, variation of loads, fatigue, etc. will reduce the remaining life of bridges. Dealing with thousands of bridges and several factors that cause deterioration, makes the rating process extremely complicated. Current simplified but practical methods of rating a network of bridges are not based on an accurate structural condition assessment system. On the other hand, the sophisticated but more accurate methods are only used for a single bridge or particular types of bridges. It is therefore necessary to develop a practical and accurate system, which will be capable of rating a network of railway bridges. This article introduces a new method to rate a network of bridges based on their current and future structural conditions. The method identifies typical bridges representing a group of railway bridges. The most crucial agents will be determined and categorized to criticality and vulnerability factors. Classification based on structural configuration, loading, and critical deterioration factors will be conducted. Finally a rating method for a network of railway bridges that takes into account the effects of damaged structural components due to variations in loading and environmental conditions on the integrity of the whole structure will be proposed. The outcome of this article is expected to significantly improve the rating methods for railway bridges by considering the unique characteristics of different factors and incorporating the correlation among them.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the CRC for Rail Innovation (established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres program) for the funding of this research. Project No.R3.118 and Project Title: Life Cycle Management of Railway Bridges. Also the support from V/Line (Australian Rail Agency) is appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, George St., Brisbane, QLD, 4001, Australia

    M. Aflatooni, T. H. T. Chan, D. P. Thambiratnam & I. Thilakarathna

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  1. M. Aflatooni
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  2. T. H. T. Chan
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  3. D. P. Thambiratnam
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  4. I. Thilakarathna
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Correspondence to M. Aflatooni.

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Aflatooni, M., Chan, T.H.T., Thambiratnam, D.P. et al. Synthetic rating system for railway bridge management. J Civil Struct Health Monit 3, 81–91 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13349-013-0035-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13349-013-0035-6

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