The Influence of corrosion on the stresses in members of open deck railway bridges

Abstract

Nowadays, many old riveted railway bridges, mainly their members of the open deck, are corroded. The paper demonstrates the influence of corrosion on a stringer beam and on a cross-girder beam of a particular steel truss railway bridge in Slovakia. This is an important step in the assessment of the loading capacity and the residual lifetime of this bridge. A simple beam FEM model was refined by modelling the investigated members as plate elements. In such a way the real boundary conditions of the members were modelled most realistically by keeping the model as simple as possible at the same time. The stresses in the members were first calculated with the original cross-sectional dimensions and the results were compared with the real measured corroded cross-sections. A future corrosion rate was estimated and calculation of this case was also performed. The influence of stringer to cross-beam rigidity, the size of 2D FEM elements, and the steel material model (linear, bilinear with 1% hardening) were investigated too.