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Organisationseinheit der BAM
Following the long tradition of the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) since Adolf Martens has created first routines in failure analysis (Ruske, 1971), BAM has been frequently called-in by the Berlin Traffic Association (BVG) to carry out root-cause analyses of the Berlin suburban train line (Frahm, 1902), reported in Helmerich and Herter (1999), Helmerich (2000), Nega and Winkler (1998), Helmerich et al. (2002) and Herter et al. (2002). This was also the case in the 1990s, when BVG-inspectors found cracks in hanging, barrel-like shaped ballast plates of the Berlin underground steel viaducts during regularly scheduled inspections. Cracks were located parallel to the riveted connection between the ballast plates and the upper chord of the viaduct cross girder steel profiles. For safety reasons, the operator BVG immediately stopped the cracks by means of drilling stop holes at the crack tips. As intermediate measures, longitudinal steel profiles were spanned below the rail axes between the cross girders affected to stabilize the track in longitudinal direction. The inspection period was shortened from years to few weeks. BAM was mandated to measure strains under regular train traffic to analyze the cause of the cracks. Strains were measured in identical connections as the damaged details, which did not suffer from cracks at the time of the measurement. The traffic-induced strain cycles and thus the resulting strain differences in the questionable cross sections were higher than expected and resulted in stresses of max. 85.8 MPa. Calculations showed that the credible remaining fatigue life for this particular structural detail was exceeded after 68 years according to nowadays standards. Extensive discussions, further field and laboratory tests followed to develop a rehabilitation plan for retrofitting the structure with minimum interference of the traffic. Finally, a method with minimum intervention to the structure was elaborated by a consortium of the operator BVG, BAM and producers based on further laboratory and field tests at BAM. Now, the viaduct is saved for the future.
Assessment of existing steel structures - A guideline for estimation of the remaining fatigue life
(2007)
In many countries and regions, traffic infrastructure projects suffer from low funding. The budget is tight for new infrastructure building and, thus, the importance of inspection, maintenance and assessment of the existing traffic infrastructure increases. A new fatigue assessment guideline for the estimation of the remaining fatigue life of steel bridges has been written by technical committee 6 of the European Convention of Constructional Steelwork (ECCS). It will be a useful tool for the complementation of bridge management systems, used commonly for condition assessment.
Design specifications and rules are harmonised throughout Europe. They are under constant development, but there is still a lack of forwarding and concentrating experiences as well as developing rules for the fatigue assessment on existing steel structures. This paper presents a guideline with a proposed fatigue assessment procedure for existing steel structures embedded in information about old materials and non-destructive testing methods for the evaluation of details (ECCS 2004, Assessment of existing steel structures). Particular attention is paid on remedial measures which are proposed for weak details and damages caused by fatigue. The developed fatigue assessment procedure can be applied to existing steel structures under cyclic loading in general, but the guideline concentrates on the existing traffic infrastructure made from old steel, because of the public importance. The proposed procedure summarizes, regroups and arranges the knowledge in the field of assessment on existing steel to be applied by practicing engineers. The procedure is a milestone in knowledge transfer from a state of scientific knowledge to state-of-the-art.