PSI - Issue 62

Andrea Meoni et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 62 (2024) 73–80 Meoni et al/ Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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1. Introduction Bridge management is a challenging task on the part of management authorities and bridge owners, yet of paramount importance to ensure the proper operation and level of safety of the infrastructure network. In 2020, in Italy, the Italian Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport released the Guidelines for Risk Classification and Management, Safety Assessment, and Monitoring of Existing Bridges (hereinafter referred to as Italian Guidelines), to provide specifications to standardize the management of bridges, starting from the assessment of their risk and structural defective conditions to the evaluation of their structural performance, the implementation of monitoring systems, and more (Consiglio Superiore dei Lavori Pubblici 2020). The Italian Guidelines also promote the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) environments as a key tool for bridge management, especially in the case of bridges of strategic importance for the road network or characterized by critical structural conditions. BIM platforms ensure high interoperability between different tasks and entities involved in bridge design, management, and retrofitting, yet, in practical applications, they are often used solely as repositories of information rather than active operating environments in which to process and analyze data from different sources, such as risk assessments and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems. In recent years, several methodologies and approaches have been proposed by the scientific community to implement new functionalities for the management of bridges and other structures in BIM environments (Delgado et al 2018, Ciccone et al 2022, Deng et al 2022, Li et al 2022, Meoni et al 2022). In this context, this paper presents the first results regarding a new BIM-based approach conceived to achieve comprehensive assessment and management of the risk conditions and structural performance of bridges. The paper also reports a practical application of the proposed framework on a post-tensioned concrete box girder bridge included in the Italian road network to demonstrate its feasibility and potentialities. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 outlines the proposed BIM-based approach, while Section 3 presents the application case study and the methodologies adopted to perform risk and structural performance assessment. Section 4 illustrates the obtained results; hence Section 5 concludes the paper with final comments and remarks. 2. Informed bridge management The proposed approach defines a framework for informed management of bridges based on the assessment of their risk conditions and structural performance. Its implementation into the BIM environment ensures high interoperability between the diverse analyses included in the framework. Figure 1 schematically illustrates the proposed approach. Once the digital 3D model of the selected bridge is constructed, data to perform risk and structural performance evaluations can be gathered from different sources, such as technical drawings and reports, site inspections, SHM systems, and more, hence stored/rendered accessible within the adopted BIM platform. Risk evaluations can be performed by following the provisions of a selected standard for bridge risk assessment, the latter integrated into the BIM environment via specific programming codes, then processing the required information by selecting it directly from the dataset constructed into the BIM platform. Concurrently, at a first level of knowledge, structural performance evaluations can be carried out by assessing the extent of the structural defects detected on the bridge under assessment during its visual inspection. In this regard, outcomes from laser scanner and photogrammetric surveys, possibly taken at each consecutive visual inspection, can be also stored into the BIM platform to create visual time histories containing information regarding the onset and progression of the structural damage revealed on the bridge at every inspection. More refined structural performance evaluations can be obtained when the bridge is equipped with tailored SHM systems. In this case, a digital replica of the monitoring system, for instance including information on sensor placement and connectivity, datasheets, and more, can be represented in the 3D model of the bridge. Then, according to the monitored features (i.e., strains, displacements, accelerations, tilts, and more), specific algorithms can be implemented within the adopted BIM platform by using programming codes, thus allowing SHM data processing and result visualization. The outcomes from the proposed approach contribute to the informed management of the bridge under evaluation through (i) understanding the risk conditions to which the asset is exposed and to what extent, (ii) detailed monitoring of its structural defectiveness, and (iii) assessment of its structural performance under operational conditions.