Abstract

Existing bridges represents strategic components of infrastructural nets, actually matching with an increasing traffic flow. Despite their increasing age, and even if subjected to an increasing heavy traffic, these nets stands generally in a good structural health. At the same time, prolonged out of service due to structural problems are rare. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight the major causes of degradation reported in bridges, to achieve an adequate maintenance and design. In particular, the design stage should be aware that new structures should ensure growing capacity and structural performance along its lifetime. Bridge assessment help in this way: it is a relatively recent bridge engineering science growing faster, as the amount of resources needed for the complete repair of existing bridges is absolutely impossibile to be retrieved for the managing authorities. It is a scientific based and technical procedure, mainly not coded, aiming at producing evidences on the bridge health, of the structural reliability, and of the suggested procedure to prolong its life. The purpose of this study, is to provide a review of recent studies and research accomplishments in the field of bridge assessment, management and life cycle analysis.

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