PSI - Issue 62

Manuel D’Angelo et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 62 (2024) 9–15 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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Fig. 1. Geographic location of the Level 0 bridge sample.

Level 0 deals with the census and geolocation of the bridge. However, the Guidelines requires to collect some relevant information about the bridge structure, i.e., period of construction, geometry, the structural scheme, and materials. Documentary research is necessary to gather these data. However, onsite inspections are needed whenever the original design project or documents describing the bridge are missing. In general, this is often the case for many bridge owners. For local municipality owners, the percentage of bridge with no information is in general higher.

Fig. 2. Total length distribution of the L0 bridge sample

The bridge sample can be described according to different parameters, such as construction period, total length, and the ones previously mentioned. Guidelines distinguish three time periods: bridges that were built before 1945, between 1945 and 1980, and after 1980; the bridges represent, respectively, the 27, 48, and 24% of these classes. For the total length, the 60% of bridges are shorter than 20 meters, whilst about 20% in the 20-50 meters. Finally, only about the 10% of the sample is longer than 50 m (10%) (Fig. 2).