Understanding the behaviour of wrought-iron riveted assemblies: manufacture and testing in France

Abstract

Numerous wrought-iron bridges can be found in the French railway network. Since most of this architectural heritage was built during the second half of the nineteenth century, these old riveted structures have been in service for over 100 years and need an adapted maintenance policy. This paper, done in collaboration between the University of Brest (France) and the National Society of French Railways, presents the French railway network, its wrought-iron riveted bridges and the different scales used to analyse their mechanical behaviour. Once these are established, the paper presents an experimental strategy carried out to identify the behaviour of a riveted constructional detail under quasi-static and cyclic loadings through the manufacture and testing of double-shear hot-riveted specimens. The tested assemblies were fabricated from the recovered material from the demolished bridge over Adour River (France). The tests showed an important scatter on the mechanical behaviour of the riveted wrought-iron specimens (for both tensile and fatigue tests). This was mainly attributed to material and process parameters. A static loading scenario was proposed, and the fatigue tests were statistically analysed and the results compared to data found in the literature.