Structural problems due to corrosion, ageing, durability, aggressive environments, materials defects, lack of ductility and unforeseen behaviour under seismic loads may significantly compromise the resistance and safety of bridges. Scheduled maintenance of bridges becomes important to ensure complete serviceability of the road network. Among existing bridge management systems (BMSs), this work is a contribution to the evaluation criteria of bridge condition by means of visual inspection, prediction of future structural condition and planning of maintenance intervention. After a brief review of some existing BMSs, a simple new procedure for evaluation of bridge condition by means of visual inspection, aimed at general planning of maintenance in a BMS framework, is presented in this paper. This procedure is applied to stock, including about 200 bridges and viaducts, of the Veneto region road network in the north-eastern part of Italy, and is then discussed
The Paderno Bridge along the Adda river in the northern part of Italy is a relevant arch-bridge connecting Milan and Bergamo province in the northern part of Italy: the bridge is part of the Monza-Bergamo line and is in service from 1889. A stepwise and practical approach for evaluating the structural integrity of historical and deteriorated steel bridges, incorporating analytical, mechanical, and structural characterizations, is presented. Critical regions of hot spot members were identified using structural finite-element analysis, and fatigue reliability assessment analysis has been performed along with traffic estimation, taking into account various scenarios of traffic increase, in order to assess the possible remaining fatigue life. This analysis has evidenced that the structure might be kept in service at least for other 10 years. Appropriate retrofitting interventions are also indicated.
Assessment of structural integrity and remaining life are essential tools for the management of ageing infrastructures, especially bridges. Compared to bolted or welded structures, little attention has been devoted to the fatigue assessment of riveted details. To fill this gap, extensive experiments are conducted on a short-span two-lane riveted steel-girder railway bridge near Sacile, Italy. In service since 1918, it was dismantled in 2006 and moved to a structural laboratory. Within a fatigue assessment framework, first physical and physical– chemical tests were performed, characterising the material properties; then, static, cyclic and fatigue full-scale tests were carried out. The experimental investigation allowed to test in particular the safe condition of the short riveted diaphragm connections of the bridge, and to compare the current fatigue design curves with experimental results. Moreover, the current practice to equate the fatigue behaviour of rivets to that of non-preloaded bolts proved to be a safe comparison
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