Garoo Bridge Upgrades.
Client.
Tamworth Regional Council
Location.
New South Wales
Project Description.
As part of an initiative to improve freight productivity, Tamworth Regional Council sought to gazette Garoo Rd and Lindsays Gap Rd for Higher Mass Limit (HML) B-double vehicles. Two bridges along the route (Lucella Bridge and Middlebrook Creek Bridge) were known to be deficient.
Ductile Consulting Engineers (partnering with Constructive Solutions) were engaged to assess the bridges and develop and implement strengthening solutions.
One of the bridges did not have drawings for the deck and piles, hence alternative methods including field investigations and assumptions/sensitivity testing needed to be adopted. We assessed the bridges and developed bespoke repair and strengthening solutions including the use of carbon fibre strengthening of headstocks.
Following completion of the strengthening works, we undertook load testing of one of the bridges to validate the design assumptions. Using strain gauges, we were able to correlate bridge displacements with those predicted in our finite element model, thus verifying that the installed strengthening work had been effective.
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