Defect investigation and replacement implementation of bearings for long-span continuous box girder bridges under operating high-speed railway networks: a case study

Bridge bearings easily suffer damage when exposed to various loading and environmental changes during their lifetime. This effect can have a considerable impact on the bridge service performance, bearing replacement should be performed if occurs. Compared with highway bridges, for long-span bridges under operating high-speed railways (HSRs) is more challenging due higher safety requirements operation of trains, larger jacking reaction forces single piers complex structures. In this paper, defects in five larger-scale HSR are investigated through field detection, followed by scheme that includes temporary support continuous height adjustment, large capacity good stability. Finally, method using invented developed reverse disassembly or assembly technology as well monitoring proposed implemented bridge. The results show most caused problems remaining from installation, which aggravated long period, feasible, sheds light maintenance networks.