ABSTRACT
The large number of steel bridges in the Czech Republic were built more than 100 years ago, but they are still in the service today, most of them as railway bridges. However, the conditions of those bridges are getting worse and throughout inspections and assessments should be done to ensure the bridge safety. The paper describes the general procedures during the assessment of the load capacity of old steel bridges on a case example. It will be shown on the steel truss bridge in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. The paper will first describe the diagnostics, that should be performed on this type of bridges, the procedures in the creating of the numerical model and the specific modelling tasks, that should not be omitted, such as bearing modelling, joint stiffness etc. Especially for the joint stiffness the 3D advanced CBFEM modelling was used for the most important joints. The second part of the paper will describe the possible load reductions, based on the statistical evaluation of the live load, wind load and the results of the wind tunnel testing. Those reductions, which are based on the advanced understanding of the bridge behavior, will lead to the improvement of the bridge capacity and extension of the bridge life time.
