Service life assessment of steel riveted railway bridges: A case study

In this paper a service life assessment of an aged steel riveted railway bridge is presented. Nowadays, such bridges show structural deficiencies in the riveted connections due to the increased traffic demand, the current code requirements, the deterioration due to fatigue and corrosion. To this end, a life-cycle evaluation of structural performance over time is envisaged. The assessment of fatigue capacity is carried out considering the influence of variation of stress intensity related to the thickness loss by corrosion over time. The residual service life is assessed for several design scenarios, each defined as a combination of the maintenance performed during the service life, the train loads acting on the structure and the corrosion of bridge components, taking into account the fatigue and corrosion effects