Monitoring
Installation & monitoring
The century-old granite, stone arch, Ballardvale Bridge, crosses the Shawsheen River near Andover, Massachusetts, and serves the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) Boston – Haverhill Line and also carries Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains and freight rail. In mid-October 2008, the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company, the regional rail arm of the MBTA, placed an emergency request to Geocomp concerning an observed crack in the masonry arch bridge. The challenge was to respond rapidly to avoid bridge closure of a key rail corridor through instrumentation of an aging bridge.
The emergency request to Geocomp concerning an observed crack in the masonry arch bridge required rapid response to avoid bridge closure of a key rail corridor through instrumentation of an aging bridge. Geocomp responded within just one day and began conducting in-service load testing and monitoring using its iSiteCentral® system. Displacement data was automatically collected from five locations on the bridge to show the influence of trains traveling over the bridge after it developed a large crack in one pier.