Moesa Railway Bridge

Short Description:

The Moesa railway bridge near Bellinzona is a three-span bridge consisting of two parallel steel girders with their lower part supporting a 50 cm thick concrete deck. This new bridge was built parallel to the old steel bridge. After dismantling this later, the new bridge was then pushed on the old and refurbished pillars.

Aim of monitoring:

Measurement of the concrete deformation due to shrinkage and the pushing of the bridge.

Main results:

The SOFO sensors from Smartec that were usable after installation gave nice shrinkage curves similar to those encountered at Venoge. A discontinuity due to the heating produced by the concrete setting in the successive section was also visible. During the push phase, additional sensors were attached under the concrete slab and measured the curvature of the bridge due to uneven push

Please contact us for more information regarding our sensor technology for bridge monitoring applications and read through our other case studies from Smartec and our sister company Roctest. 

Related Papers:

• Railway bridge monitoring during construction and bridge sliding, D. Inaudi, N. Casanova, P. Kronenberg, S. Vurpillot, SPIE, Smart Structures and Materials, San Diego, USA – (Vol 3043, p. 58 – 64) – 1997
• Fiber optic deformation sensors for bridge monitoring, D. Inaudi, N. Casanova, S. Vurpillot, Int. Conf. on New Technologies in Structural Engineering, Lisboa, Portugal – (p 975-982) – 1997
• Verformungsmessungen mit optischen Glasfasersensoren, N. Casanova, Weiterbildungskurs ETH Zürich, Feldmessungen und Beobachtungsmethode in der Geotechnik, Switzerland – (p 1-10) – 1997
• Structural monitoring by curvature analysis using interferometric fiber optic sensors, D. Inaudi, S. Vurpillot, N. Casanova, P. Kronenberg, Smart Materials and Structures – (Vol 7, p.199-208) – 1998