Safety Management of Existing Bridges: A Case Study

With the publication of the new guidelines on Risk Classification and Risk Management and Safety Assessment and Monitoring of Existing Bridges, a new phase in the management of bridges has begun that suggests the criteria of surveillance and monitoring. All these activities have led to the need to establish proper control procedures and intervention priority. In this paper, a case study of an existing bridge in concrete reinforced is presented. The methodology includes the following steps: (i) use of aerial vehicles (Uavs) for image acquisition; (ii) creation of a three-dimensional model of the bridge containing information on the geometric and degradation of the concrete and reinforcements, (iii) elaboration through soft-computing techniques for defect detection; (iv) creating an “evolutionary” database, able to update the degradation in subsequent UAV inspections; (v) implementation of defects in a structural software. The structural analyses were carried out using commercial software (Fata Next by Stacec Srl) capable of simulating different degradation models, with fiber beam elements with Forced-Based formulation in large displacements.