Research project IDA-KI: Experiments on stress corrosion cracking on bridge girders more than 50 years old

Last week, the Institute of Solid Structures (IMB), Technische Universität Dresden carried out stress corrosion cracking tests on bridge girders more than 50 years old as part of the IDA-KI research project. The sampled girders of the BTE series (railway bridges) were prestressed with Hennigsdorfer prestressing steel, which is susceptible to stress corrosion cracking and thus tends to have a brittle material behaviour. The girders were obtained in the course of a bridge deconstruction and made available to our institute.

During the tests, we had the opportunity to investigate the load-bearing and deformation behaviour of the prefabricated parts, which weigh about 40 tonnes, up to the point of failure. In addition, different metrological methods were used to test whether artificially created tension wire bridges can be detected and localised. In addition to fibre-optic strain measurements (DSS), acoustic measurements were also carried out by the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing using a fibre-optic sensor from Nerve-Sensors. The deformation behaviour of the girder as well as the progressive crack formation could be monitored over the entire girder length of 12 m with extensive photogrammetric measurements (DIC) by GOM Metrology.
 
The IDA-KI project, with a total volume of €3.85 million, is funded by the Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport as part of the #mFUND innovation initiative. Together with the partners MKP GmbH, Institute of Digital and Autonomous Construction, Hamburg University of Technology and Hentschke Bau GmbH, we are creating a real data basis for the development of algorithms for building monitoring through load tests on a large-scale demonstrator. Instead of manually evaluating large amounts of monitoring data, this data will be automatically analysed and evaluated in real time in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the IDA-KI project or the specific tests.
 
We would like to thank all our partners for the cooperative collaboration! Now we are getting down to work in order to lift the treasure trove of data we have gained.