Static and dynamic tests of Arade Bridge in the A2 highway

Abstract

This paper presents the static and dynamic tests of the Arade bridge, located at the A2 highway, in Algarve, Portugal, which were performed at the end its construction, before it was opened to the traffic. In the static load tests, several quantities, like displacements, rotations and strains, were measured in the structure, under the effects of loaded trucks placed in different positions along the bridge deck. The dynamic tests consisted in ambient vibration measurements and in tests with trucks crossing the bridge at predefined velocities in order to evaluate the dynamic effects of that action. In this paper, both static and dynamic experimental results are presented, discussed and compared with the values computed with a finite element model of the bridge.