Keywords: high-speed railway bridge, permanent monitoring, model updating, algorithm optimisation, forced and free vibration measurements, damping.

Villanueva del Jalón viaduct is a high-speed railway bridge located at Calatayud, Spain, composed of a pre-stressed concrete box girder with 6 spans and 5 piers measuring a total length of 250 m. Within the framework of the VIADINTEGRA research project funded by both the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity and the European Union, this viaduct is being permanently monitored, in order to improve its reliability in assuring structural safety and optimize repair and maintenance operations, by means of a continuum evaluation of its structural health condition. With this purpose, an extensive vibration measurement campaign was carried out in September 2011 in order to determine the dynamic characteristics of the bridge as a reference. Subsequently, a long-term monitoring system was designed and installed. In this paper the main results following an analysis of the dynamic measurements under the passage of high speed trains are presented. The measured data have been compared with the results predicted by a finite element model (FEM) of the viaduct, which has been updated with the short-term dynamic results. The results of this work will provide a very useful tool for the assessment of the long term evolution of the dynamic behaviour of this structure under service actions, and will enable the detection of rapid or sudden variations in its performance that might indicate the appearance of a structural damage.

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