Effects of pre-existing damage on vertical load-bearing capacity of masonry arch bridges: Fid-Bau Portal

Effects of pre-existing damage on vertical load-bearing capacity of masonry arch bridges

Zizi, Mattia / Chisari, Corrado / De Matteis, Gianfranco

Abstract In-service masonry arch road bridges, mainly realised before the first half of the last century, represent a wide portion of the entire worldwide infrastructural asset. Given their age, during their service life these structures could have experienced damage due to anthropic (i.e. traffic) and natural (i.e. earthquakes, soil settlements, degradation, etc.) actions which may have inevitably affected their load-bearing capacity. The present study addresses the problem of the residual capacity estimation of damaged bridges by investigating the impact of previous loading on the actual strength of the structure. In particular, reference to a past experimental activity retrieved from the literature on reduced-scale bridges subjected to concentrated vertical loads has been made to calibrate a reliable detailed finite element model in Abaqus software. Then, damage of different extent has been introduced by simulating the transit of vehicles of various weights on the structure and the residual capacities of the bridge have been assessed and compared against the undamaged configuration. The results confirm that pre-existing damage due to traffic loading may significantly influence the capacity of such structures, with peak load reductions up to 60% estimated through the proposed methodology.

Highlights • Pre-existing damage affects the actual capacity of existing masonry arch bridges. • Numerical models can be profitably adopted to simulate the presence of pre-existing damage. • Damage can be introduced in numerical models by simulating their causes. • Rigid-block analyses can provide conservative estimation of the actual capacity of masonry arch bridges.