Walking to the station at Durham this week, I walked along the road under the viaduct. I noticed veritcal cracks running from top to bottom of some of the piers. The pier nearest the station appears to have sunk slightly as you can see the handrails are deformed.
It got me wondering, how are these structures maintained and risk assessed given:
Drawings might not be available
They aren't built to modern or recognised standards.
Some of the techniques used to construct are hard to model how they will degrade over time. For example I read years ago that the piers of Durham viaduct are built on top of oak piles driven over 100 feet into the Flass Bog down to bedrock.
How do you monitor and maintain a structure like that with faster, heavier and more frequent traffic over it than was envisaged when it was built?
What do you do when cracks start appearing? How do you know if they are consequential or now? To my semi-lay eye cracks running contiguously through stone blocks suggests some kind of movement is taking place.
A lot of these structures are approaching 150 or even 200 years old, at some point renewal is going to have to take place?
It got me wondering, how are these structures maintained and risk assessed given:
Drawings might not be available
They aren't built to modern or recognised standards.
Some of the techniques used to construct are hard to model how they will degrade over time. For example I read years ago that the piers of Durham viaduct are built on top of oak piles driven over 100 feet into the Flass Bog down to bedrock.
How do you monitor and maintain a structure like that with faster, heavier and more frequent traffic over it than was envisaged when it was built?
What do you do when cracks start appearing? How do you know if they are consequential or now? To my semi-lay eye cracks running contiguously through stone blocks suggests some kind of movement is taking place.
A lot of these structures are approaching 150 or even 200 years old, at some point renewal is going to have to take place?
