Title: Bridge Load Testing in Germany

Author(s): Gregor Schacht, Frederik Wedel, Steffen Marx

Publication: Symposium Paper

Volume: 323

Issue:

Appears on pages(s): 6.1-6.20

Keywords: load testing, bridges, diagnostic load test, proof load test, monitoring, railway bridges

DOI: 10.14359/51702436

Date: 5/1/2018

Abstract:
This paper presents the current practice of bridge load testing in Germany. At first a brief summary of the historical value and meaning of load testing bridges at commissioning is given and also accidental over-load tests are described. While load testing of brides as part of the commissioning is common in many European countries today, in Germany load testing is only permitted in exceptional cases and to evaluate damage or questioned existing bridges. While proof loading is rare, short and long-time test under serviceability loads are a common engineering task in Germany. Especially the calibration and verification of numerical models by load testing shows a high potential for the future. As the infrastructure gets older and the traffic loads increase a high demand for experimental evaluation methods becomes more important and request further research work to answer open questions. The four given examples of load tests demonstrate possible applications and different tasks for load testing of concrete bridges.