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Is it a bird, is it a plane, no it's a bridge!
April 02, 2008A government lab in Teddington has taken on its biggest sample for analysis to date - a 14 tonne foot-bridge.
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is a world-leading centre of excellence in developing and applying the most accurate measurement standards, science and technology. For over 100 years it has been the UK's National Measurement Institute and provides highly accurate measurement and analysis for public and private sector benefit alike.
The "sample" was a 14 tonne footbridge that is 20 metres long and 5 metres high and has been used to allow access from one side of the NPL site to the other for the last 46 years. With redevelopment of the NPL site this bridge has become redundant. Rather than demolish the bridge, and in the spirit of recycling, NPL scientists have used this unique opportunity to run a project using the old bridge to improve civil engineering structures.
Before this could begin the small matter of needing to move the massive bridge across the site away from the demolition zone needed to be addressed. Moving such a structure is unusual and was expertly carried out by Burton Smith and Beck and Pollitzer who used a 250 tonne capacity crane that extended nearly 50 metres into the sky.
After lifting the bridge it was then trailered across the NPL site, with essential co-operation from LGC, taking an hour to travel the quarter mile earlier this year, squeezing around tight turns and under trees before being lifted above existing buildings to its final resting place.
The bridge will be used as a demonstrator to try out different techniques for monitoring structures for a government project to encourage UK industry and UK infrastructure to use monitoring to maximise the lifetime and minimise maintenance costs for civil engineering structures.
During the three year project the bridge will be loaded until it cracks, repaired using new composite repair methods and then retested. The opportunity to have a large scale structure that can be abused in this way whilst being monitored is a once in a lifetime event and will provide evidence for the cost saving benefits of structural health monitoring.
National Physical Laboratory
Before this could begin the small matter of needing to move the massive bridge across the site away from the demolition zone needed to be addressed. Moving such a structure is unusual and was expertly carried out by Burton Smith and Beck and Pollitzer who used a 250 tonne capacity crane that extended nearly 50 metres into the sky.
After lifting the bridge it was then trailered across the NPL site, with essential co-operation from LGC, taking an hour to travel the quarter mile earlier this year, squeezing around tight turns and under trees before being lifted above existing buildings to its final resting place.
The bridge will be used as a demonstrator to try out different techniques for monitoring structures for a government project to encourage UK industry and UK infrastructure to use monitoring to maximise the lifetime and minimise maintenance costs for civil engineering structures.
During the three year project the bridge will be loaded until it cracks, repaired using new composite repair methods and then retested. The opportunity to have a large scale structure that can be abused in this way whilst being monitored is a once in a lifetime event and will provide evidence for the cost saving benefits of structural health monitoring.
National Physical Laboratory
Is the Dead Sea dying?
The water levels in the Dead Sea - the deepest point on Earth - are dropping at an alarming rate with serious environmental consequences, according to Shahrazad Abu Ghazleh and colleagues from the University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany.
Lightweight, high resistance synthetic fibres to save historic buildings and monuments
Many of Europe's historic buildings, monuments and civil engineering structures are gradually decaying. Already weakened by age, they are damaged by earth tremors, pollution and traffic vibration. And this is more than just a cultural problem. Continual maintenance is extremely costly and obtrusive, not least because of its negative impact upon tourism and traffic. Conventional rehabilitation methods using wooden or steel buttresses, tie rods and scaffolding supports dominate the landscape and usually do not offer a long term, durable solution. But EUREKA project COMREHAB has developed new techniques to strengthen masonry, wood and concrete buildings using carbon-fibre strips instead of stee
New Method for Measuring Residual Stress Developed at Oxford
An inventor in Oxford University’s Department of Engineering Science has developed a new portable instrument for the measurement of residual stress in engineering components and structures.
Why Are We Making Such A Meal Of Our Nuclear Waste?
Lord Oxburgh, President of the Geological Society of London [Note 1] and Chairman of the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee, will try to answer this question and propose a solution today in his final Presidential Address to the Society. You are invited to hear him speak at 1600 on Thursday 2 May at the Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. (Please contact Dr Ted Nield if you wish to attend. There will be no transcript.) Previewing his address, Lord Oxburgh writes in the April issue of the Society's monthly magazine Geoscientist: "The radioactive products of civil and military programmes over the last half-century are currently held in temporary surface sto
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