Bridge Repair
WSP provides detailed inspections specific to a bridge’s unique structural conditions, helping clients to minimize repair costs and reduce operational risks. However, when repairs are needed WSP’s experienced engineering teams deliver efficient solutions, including:
- Temporary bridges and traffic maintenance plans
- Patching and emergency repairs
- Bridge deck repair and replacement
- Staged replacement plans
- Strengthening using composite materials (FRP)
Structural Evaluation
Condition assessments are crucial to planning repair and replacement projects and provide accurate, up-to-date assessments of bridge conditions. WSP’s structural evaluation services examine all components of a bridge in order to determine its overall physical condition, enabling the most efficient and cost-effective recommendations for our clients.
WSP evaluations include:
- Load rating/assessment
- Vulnerability analysis
- Preservation strategies
- Masonry arches
Load testing measures the structural response of a bridge under a variety of load conditions to determine its structural integrity. Data obtained from theoretical analysis, instrumentation, and monitoring of load testing can eliminate unnecessary repairs and help to predict optimal maintenance and rehabilitation requirements.
WSP’s experience in load testing includes the provision of structural evaluations and refined load ratings for several structures under the authority of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation. Through diagnostic field load testing and the application of 3D finite element analysis, WSP reported findings for each structure that included details of test protocols, observations from field tests, finite element analyses and realistic live load distribution factors for subsequent use in refined load rating analyses.
For the 5-year framework covering the period 2014-2019 Structures Assessments under the Civils Assessments Framework Agreement (CAFA) to Network Rail, WSP serves the Sussex, Wessex, Western and Wales Routes in delivery of Level 0, Level 1, and Level 2 structural assessments of rail and road bridges, culverts, footbridges, station canopies, and other civil structures as required by the Route Asset Managers.
Bridge Diagnostics
Bridges are capital-intensive assets that require systematic maintenance and preservation. Detailed structure condition assessments play a critical role in the effective management of bridge infrastructure.
Our team utilizes field instrumentation, testing, and finite element analysis to provide insight into structural behavior and to generate estimates of realistic load distributions in a bridge and its components. Such diagnostics allow our teams to determine the true load carrying capacity of a structure and to diagnose potential deficiencies that cannot otherwise be identified. WSP also collaborates with leading technology providers on tasks involving material testing and corrosion condition evaluations of structures.
Applications of WSP bridge diagnostics include:
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Strength assessment
- Fatigue life assessment
- Crack investigation
- Tracking structure movements
- Diagnosis of site-specific conditions with defects/deterioration
- Cable tension assessment
- Determination of modal properties and dynamic response characteristics
- Risk assessment associated with structural resonance
- Structure health monitoring
- Corrosion and material evaluation of existing structures
WSP’s bridge diagnostic technology can determine actual capacity and help identify potential weaknesses for even the most complex structures, utilizing field instrumentation, load testing, modelling, and finite element analysis. Combined with assessment technology that evaluates corrosion levels throughout a structure, these non-destructive techniques can determine the remaining service life of a bridge in a proactive rather than reactive manner.
Structure Monitoring and Rehabilitation
Our teams provide detailed assessments of existing bridges in order to develop innovative solutions for their rehabilitation. WSP is experienced with a wide variety of construction methods and our services include bridge assessment, remediation, strengthening, and reconstruction.
Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit
Seismic engineering is playing an increasingly important role in the design and rehabilitation of infrastructure as planners, designers, and engineers seek new ways to protect and extend the service life of their facilities. Seismic elements that increase strength, improve ductility, and reduce potential earthquake damage must be incorporated into the development of new bridges, roads, tunnels, rail lines, and buildings, as well as into the rehabilitation of existing facilities.
Using experience obtained from seismic design and retrofit studies for bridges, our teams use sophisticated computer models to evaluate the response of structures and the resulting seismic forces and displacements acting on structural members. Based on the outcome of these studies, measures to withstand such forces and displacements are then incorporated into a design and include extensive detailing to improve performance under seismic loads. WSP’s seismic retrofit designs apply to individual elements of a bridge that, when taken as a whole, serve to reduce deck movement, strengthen columns, and improve foundation stability.
Services Include:
- Maintenance and operations programs
- Physical condition inspection services and reports
- Load rating/assessment and evaluation studies
- Soundings and underwater inspections
- Long-term asset management plans
- Management of sub-standard structures
- Special inspections for post tensioned structures
- Structural health monitoring
- Structural material testing
- Decommissioning/end of life studies