WIT Press


The Residual Life Of Battle Damaged Bridges

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

35

Pages

10

Page Range

693 - 702

Published

1998

Size

1,961 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/SU980611

Copyright

© British Crown copyright 1998/DERA. Published with the permission of the controller of Her Britannic Majesty's Stationary Office

Author(s)

A.J. Stow & D. Webber

Abstract

The British army has a long history in the design and construction of military bridging, its latest bridges being made of large welded sections pinned together to form trackways. To utilise the strength of these bridges, there needs to be rapid assessment of the damage and then simple rules which can be applied to the assessment to indicate the load class of the damaged bridge along with the number of crossings which military vehicles can make. DERA are researching this problem in three ways Ballistic damage is most likely to occur from a near miss of a fragmentation shell. DERA tests show this gives extensive damage which is widely spread over the sides of the panels. Such tests have been carried out on steel and aluminium alloy panels, and the damage has been carefully catalogued. Following the tests, single tr

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