ABSTRACT
Fundamental aspects in railway bridges are the extreme stiffness and the relative influence of the impact of the train transits as compared to the variations resulting from the thermal phenomena. Within the framework of structural monitoring of railway bridges, an innovative approach in the monitoring techniques for the measurement of the relevant parameters of the structures is presented. This method allows to separate the effects of the train transit alone from the measurement of the parameters in certain rest conditions (environmental noise and thermal effects), already during the acquisition phase (edge computing) in near-real time. This approach enables to create two distinct datasets in terms of stresses, strains and displacements. Those, together with the measurement of the mass and speed of the trains transiting on the bridge, and considering the high frequency of train transit, allow the immediate use of the monitoring data for the construction of a dedicated dataset in terms of cause-effect (e. g. curvatures, bending moment, shear stresses), which can be used to verify the behavior of the structure comparing it with what expected. The differentiated measurement and the innovative calculation processes allow detailed analysis of a single-track deck or, in the case of double-track decks, the distinction of the transit direction (with evaluation of torsional phenomena) or of simultaneous transit on both tracks (greater flexural effects). The presented monitoring solution (hw & sw) allows to extract engineering parameters directly during the acquisition phase, assimilating and effectively treating each train transit as a single load test.
