The Hell Bridge test arena is a full-scale outdoor facility for experimental testing and monitoring of steel bridges. After 104 years in continuous service, the bridge was retired and moved to new foundations to serve as a test arena for researchers working on condition monitoring, damage detection, inspection, and service life estimation.  This steel riveted truss bridge is highly representative for the many aging bridges in the Norwegian and European transport network.

The testbed allows new sensor technology, long-term monitoring, and damage features to be tested on a real civil engineering structure. Since the structure is not in service, structural damage can be introduced by removing structural details, such as rivets, steel profiles and components.

Open-access data sets for this bridge in undamaged and damaged conditions is available through our open data initiatives.