CASE STUDY: IMPACT OF ROUTE SPECIFIC LOADS AND NUMERICAL MODEL CALIBRATION ON FATIGUE ASSESSMENT OF AN EXISTING RAILWAY BRIDGE (COMPDYN 2023)

The presented case study investigates the proposed fatigue damage on an existing 108 year old riveted railway bridge, located in Austria. The bridge was instrumented with numerous sensors (strain gauges, inclinometers, temperature sensors) in the summer of 2022 and a Weigh in Motion (WIM) system was installed on the track. Since then continuous monitoring is carried out and the axle loads as well as the structural response of the structure during train passage is recorded. The study shows the process of numerical model calibration of a finite element (FE) model based on recorded sensor data and known defects of the bridge structure. The influence of the calibrated FE-model is shown by a comparison of calculated fatigue damage using measured loads from the WIM system as well as a train mix from codified design, both for the initial and the calibrated numerical model.