Wednesday 29 November 2017

Visit to Chillon Viaduct …………. First time inside the deck of a bridge
Chillon castle is well known monument with history dating 11th century as it’s situated in a strategic location connecting the way between south and north.

Besides Chillon castle there is one more monument in Swiss mountains which is Chillon Viaduct, beautifully designed civil engineering concrete box Girder Bridge built in 1969.



As part of INFRASTAR project I got opportunity to work on Chillon viaduct where EPFL MCS department is performing long term monitoring of strains inside box girder to know more about the structure and its performance in fatigue.



Picture below shows monitoring set up inside the box girder of Chillon Viaduct.


Monitoring set up covered with wooden box

Total monitoring set up consisted of electrical strain gauges which measures strains in reinforcement (transverse and longitudinal) at a frequency of ~ 100 Hz. Temperature gauges are installed on all four sides of box girder to measure variation of temperature in structure. Accelerometers are also installed to know dynamic behaviour of the bridge. This long term monitoring will be used to know the fatigue behaviour of the bridge for real time traffic.

My travel in during PhD under The Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA), Horizon 2020

The basic idea behind this Marie Skłodowska-Curie funding for ITN projects is they employ a foreign researcher and have international co...