Workshop Cluster A „Railway bridges“

On October 22, 2021, the Institute of Solid Structures of TU Dresden hosted a hybrid workshop on the topic of dealing with historic railroad bridges. The workshop, which was held with the participation of invited guests on site in Dresden and in the form of a parallel online conference, was aimed at the participants of the thematic cluster A (railroad bridges) of SPP 2255, which is composed of the two subprojects Railway Bridges – Monuments in the Network (A1) and Holistic Evaluation of Steel Railway Bridges (A2).

Railroad bridges are often neither unique nor unchanged, rather they are usually standardized, typified and transformed. Thus, a differentiated consideration is necessary. Accordingly, this workshop addressed and discussed the preservation of railroad bridges from both a preservation and an engineering perspective. The focus was particularly on the aspects of structural safety and evaluation methods. With Bärbel Schallow-Gröne (Department of Monument Preservation of the Swiss Federal Railways SBB), Eugen Brühwiler (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Jürg Conzett (Conzett Bronzini Partner AG) and Michael Streetz (Department of Technical Monuments at the State Office for Monument Preservation Saxony), renowned external experts from the field of bridge construction and monument preservation from Germany and Switzerland in addition to the sub-project leaders and participants, the presentations could be gained. This resulted in a wide-ranging program with keynote speeches followed by exciting discussions.

After introductory lectures, various practical examples were presented on the subject of structural safety, in which the often still high residual load-bearing capacity of historic railroad bridges was demonstrated by means of structural monitoring. It was impressively demonstrated that the effort involved is worthwhile, as important objects of historical building culture can be preserved in this way. Compared to new buildings, the upgrading measures required for this also have greater potential in terms of resource conservation and at the same time offer the possibility of drawing conclusions about the conditions in similar existing structures.

Subsequently, insights into the approaches and evaluation methods from the perspective of monument preservation were given. For this purpose, the history and the methods of the inventory of railroad buildings were shown. An important aspect here is the registration of entire routes in contrast to the to the registration of individual objects. The comprehensive inventory of railroad bridges should be the goal in order to facilitate the handling of the objects for the Deutsche Bahn, although it has to be done in a dynamic process.

Finally, various projects were presented to show how different conceptual approaches can be used to continue building on the existing (often listed) buildings. Thus, the upgrading through structural measures was presented as an example. Furthermore, it was shown that interventions close to the existing structure not only have advantages in terms of monument preservation, but also technical advantages. Finally, it was shown by way of example that further construction, i.e. the replacement of entire components and at the same time the further use of what already exists, is in line with the continuous conversion and further development of the structures and is thus an inherent characteristic of railroad bridges.

Further Veranstaltung, Workshop Aktivitäten