Bridge-Visit in Switzerland

By -
Already six months after the beginning of my Ph.D. I am working in the Laboratory of Maintenance and Safety of Structures MCS in l’EPFL with INFRASTAR, the European Marie Curie Project. 
I am working on the safety of bridges to find how we can monitor existing bridges for fatigue problem detection. My work is hard, but it is also funny and cool: I am not staying all the time in front of my computer => we have to visit bridges frequently.

 I am switching between the simulation word and the real world of bridges. Oftentimes I spend hours in front of my computer analyzing the data from monitoring, and sometimes I need to visit our lovely bridges to check if the data acquisition system is working well.

Bridges are situated in Switzerland between Lausanne and Bern.

Let us take a look at different bridges that I discovered once during one of our bridge-visit.

The first picture is about preparing a reinforced-concrete deck to receive a thin layer of Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) for strengthening.             


The second visit was for this railway bridge to check the monitoring system and to get the load records.  Using strain gages (picture in your right) allows a good understanding of the structural behavior of  bridges. 
Can you imagine that this small gages, once installed in specific positions can give us an idea of how this huge structure is working? 
                                                 
This arch bridge is made just with concrete, without any reinforcement! Amazing! I am wondering about the magic recipe for such a beautiful and durable concrete.  Besides, it is a very nice design. 
                                                              

 The last visit was for the Chillon Bridge, in Montreux.  
We went inside the bridge girder to get the recoded data from our monitoring system. 
Here is a panoramic view of the Chillon Viaduct                                    
                                       
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Horror story in Krakow

By -
Image
Travel shapes youth, as the saying goes. My travel last six weeks to Poland was full of challenges and instabilities, that broadens my analytical and critical mind. I visited Krakow, the first touristic city in Poland for professional reasons, the last obligatory secondment in my PhD, and my last destination before the end of the INFRASTAR project. Unlike my personal trips, I prepare well my professional travels, by programming and booking the flights long before and by finding a sure accommodation during my stay. I didn’t expect that it would be difficult to find a room or an apartment in Krakow during August and September. I contacted the agencies that were recommanded to me by some colleagues. Unfortunately, they were either not available or for students who rent for more than six months. Under this situation, I opted for Airbnb. I looked in details for all the offers, until I found an apartment near the place of my work, which was available for the six weeks of my sta
Read more

Communication for research

By -
Image
Hi dear friends, I am back to Switzerland, to my school EPFL. I had two wonderful secondment months in Berlin. Just after coming back, I had the opportunity to participate in the communication-for-research course to learn how to communicate with people in order to share knowledge. Using words on papers, drawings, posters, talks or videos, how can we reach our interlocutors? improve our language? Teachers gave us pieces of advice. I will share with you the best off  and the video that I made to practice their advice. 1. Practice your presentation until it becomes natural 2. Use body language to reflect what you are telling 3. Use colors but respect contrast and blinded color people (red is seen like green) 4. Make your friends correcting your writings before sending to your supervisor 5. Discuss ideas with friends (from discussion we develop knowledge). 6. Posters, blogs, drawing and videos are the best simple ways to share scientific knowledge
Read more

MSCA projects are life-changing experience. And HERE IS WHY

By -
Image
Three years already after the beginning of my Ph.D.  In other countries, I should be finishing and defending my work, but in Switzerland, things are different. Here the quality of research is much more appreciated. Therefore, a normal Ph.D. takes over 4 years.  This month we had the last meeting of our MCSA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions) project INFRASTAR. So we all met in Brussels to celebrate our work and give feedback about our project.  last beer with the INFRASTAR team Many conclusions were discussed, and further works were recommended. It seems that the fatigue of concrete does not have a ready to use solution, we had, therefore, the opportunity to take advantage of the synergies created by different opinions and visions. But we all agreed on one thing: Only sleep cures fatigue. And we left with this beautiful souvenir: Only sleep cures fatigue ;) Now that our MSCA project comes to an end, I would like to share with you how this project makes me a d
Read more