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Ensuring Bridge Safety and Stability: A Collaborative Approach to Monitoring and Innovation
The Surtees Bridge is a road bridge carrying the A66 road east to west across the River Tees. Originally built in 1981, settlement of the eastern abutment and embankment, lateral displacement of the piled foundation, and the need to widen the bridge to three lanes to accommodate feeder roads led to the decision to construct a new bridge in 2006.
Summary of works
Client – BAM Ritchies
Contract name – New A66 Surtees Bridge – Stockton-on-Tees
Approx. Value – £125,000
Start Date – March 2006
Completion Date – January 2008
Prior to the construction of the various piling mats and new abutments, ITM, now SOCOTEC Monitoring UK Ltd, were contracted to install vibrating wire piezometers and borehole pressure cells to monitor ground conditions. These were cabled and trenched back to Campbell Scientific based dataloggers with the data being downloaded via GPRS. Manual inclinometers were also installed and monitored by a team of ITM engineers.
Finally a series or wireless tilt sensors and crack meters were installed on the bridge piers and decking using a scaffold tower cited on a barge. Designed to monitor the existing bridge during piling operations, these transmitted data back to a GPRS base station with data from all instrumentation provided to the client via ITM’s web based software, Argus.
