ABSTRACT
Fatigue is an important design driver for steel railway bridges that are exposed to cyclic loading. The fatigue consumption for critical details can be tracked by strain measurements after construction. If the number of points exposed to fatigue is large, or when these points are not accessible, the strains in the critical points can be obtained indirectly from virtual sensing. The strains used in the fatigue assessment are then estimated from a limited set of response measurements and a model of the structure. This paper presents a validation of virtual sensing for fatigue monitoring of a railway bridge in Leuven, Belgium, using data obtained from a monitoring system. The measurement setup is explained and the adopted procedure for virtual strain sensing is outlined. The final validation consists of comparing the fatigue damage accumulation obtained from the estimated and measured strains.
