As budgets tighten, the pressure on engineers to get the most out of their existing structure inventory goes up. Some tools that can often help with this decision are live load testing and structural monitoring.
For 30 years, BDI has been providing critical structural response information to engineers responsible for maintaining lock gates, radial gates, and other water control structures. This information has often been used to make modifications, verify responses, and support operational changes. We are structural engineers who know what type of data needs to be recorded and more importantly, we know how to help translate the field data into an actual decision for the owner.
We’ve conducted testing on over a hundred hydraulic structures around the country and use a methodical and efficient approach to gather the maximum amount of data for the least cost.
Here are some scenarios where testing & monitoring may have a potentially large payoff for hydraulic structures:
- Trunnion friction in tainter gates
- Balancing cable forces for lift gates
- Balancing counterweights in lift structures
- Recording strains, deflections, torques during operation