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.