Transport Construction Diagnosis Centre

The Transport Construction Diagnosis Centre (TCDS) was established by Order of the Minister of Transport and Communications of Ukraine dd. March 21, 2006, No. 254, as a research subdivision at the Department of Structural Mechanics and Hydraulics of the Ukrainian State Academy of Railway Transport (now Ukrainian State University of Railway Transport).

The main activities of the Center include:

• diagnosis and inspection of carload and truck scales, bridges, overpasses and other transport infrastructure objects;
• all types of engineering surveys;
• certification of buildings, structures and railways;
• design of engineering structures, including industrial and civil engineering constructions.

At present, the service life of numerous structures (carload or truck scales, buildings, bridges, piping) being in operation at the Ukrainian railways is expired. In some cases, such structures are in emergency or pre-emergency condition. The supporting structures should be diagnosed to decide whether their further operation is possible. These issues can be addressed at TCDS.

The personnel of the Centre are highly qualified specialists who have the necessary experience in performing the above works. The professional qualities of the employees of the Centre are confirmed with the qualification certificates of responsible executors of certain types of work (services) related to the creation of architectural objects. The centre is equipped with modern measuring and computer equipment, an accredited laboratory, licensed software complexes for automatic design and calculation.

Since its establishment, the TCDS specialists have been performing assessing the operational properties and restoring the reliability of the bridge and tunnel structures, culverts, reinforced concrete, metal and stone load-bearing structures of industrial buildings and constructions, carload and truck scales, rail and road cranes, and foundations. Over this time, more than 250 projects have been developed to restore the operational reliability of carload scales, more than 50 studies have been carried out with the implementation of new ideas and design solutions at the Ukrainian railways, new technologies have been developed for estimation of load capacity and testing of structures.

For instance, in the cooperation with Kharkivmetroproekt and Kharkivmetrostroy JSC, works have been performed on the experimental determination of the permissible load on the reinforced concrete bored piles laid at the depth of 15.5 m by jacking. The works have been carried out during the construction of the span to Alekseevskaya station of Kharkiv underground.

Another example of the hardening of weak soils is the use of micropiles. Together with the engineers of Kharkovmetroproekt PJSC, the specialists of the Centre proposed new technology for making micropiles and proved the efficiency of its use. An experimental portable bench for testing piles with the static load was developed to determine the bearing capacity of the piles. These technologies were used for the foundation pinning during the reconstruction of the Kharkiv Regional Philharmonic Hall and the tunnel sections of the Kholodnogorsko-Zavodskaya and Alekseevskaya lines of the Kharkiv underground.

The most indicative projects for assessing the level of work performed by the specialists of the Centre include the development of new high-performance steel-and-concrete and reinforced concrete structures for railway transport facilities and the design of the building of Kharkiv-Balashovsky station, performed as part of the reconstruction of the railway station complex during the preparation of Euro-2012 in Ukraine.

The TCDS employees surveyed the load-bearing structures of the station building and carried out a numerical check of the possibility of destruction of load-bearing structures in case of increasing loads on the central supports, which the provided by the proposed reconstruction project. The degree of stress and deformation distribution was estimated by comparing the results of the initial design of the building and the design after reconstruction with an additional load on the overlap and, as a consequence, the changed characteristics of the base. Numerical analysis of the structure of the station building before and after the reconstruction was carried out using a spatial model in the environment of LIRA software complex.