PSI - Issue 62

Elena Elettore et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 62 (2024) 113–120 Elettore et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

115

3

consistent. However, a more uniform approach is necessary towards the consideration of all the risks that can affect bridges and a homogenous strategy should be used at the national level to allow the interoperability of databases own by all the management companies (Buratti et al. 2022, Capogna et al. 2023). This could result in a unified approach for risk evaluation and management of bridges over the country, which would be helpful in prioritizing interventions in a rational manner (e.g., Dinh et al. 2009, Rokneddin et al. 2013, Hadjidemetriou et al. 2021). In this context, this paper aims to provide some preliminary observations for a comparative analysis between the Italian guidelines for the risk classification, safety assessment, and monitoring of existing bridges and the ASPI manual, considering several A16 viaducts as case-studies, made of Prestressed Reinforced Concrete (PRC). In this study, after a short description of the Italian Guidelines, the key similarities and the differences are discussed. The proposed methodology for the classification of the case-study viaducts is explained and then the bridges are identified, and their characteristics are described. The comparative analysis reveals important insight aimed to refine these guidelines to best serve the safety of existing bridges and the communities they support. Some drawbacks are highlighted, which could be detrimental to an effective management of the wide Italian bridge stock. Further development and implementation of such procedure at the national level could help in building a homogenous bridge inventory, which could also be openly accessible to road users. 2. Description of the case-study viaducts The 17 case-study viaducts under evaluation belongs to the A16 motorway, called the Naples-Canosa motorway, which, crossing the Campania Apennines, connects the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic Sea extending for 172 km between Campania and Puglia regions. It is entirely managed by ASPI. In particular, the case-studies are located along the path connecting the municipalities of Grottaminarda (AV) and Vallesaccarda (AV) as illustrated in Figure 1. The A16 motorway is made up of two lanes per carriageway for almost the entire route. Bridges constitute most of the total road route length. This highlights the importance of proper risk classification and bridge stock management to retain the functionality and efficiency of this road. In all the cases, the deck material comprises PRC beams. For the sake of brevity, the attention is focused on three case-study viaducts, whose main information is listed in Table 1, including the roadway, the number of spans, the total length of the spans, the number of piers, the number of decks and the number of rows of supports. In addition, the total lengths of all viaducts are shown in Figure 3, showing that most of the viaducts have a maximum length from 100 to 200 m. The three selected case-study viaducts are shown in Figure 3, Figure 4 and Figure 5.

Figure 1. The A16 highway with the case-study viaducts from 1 to 17 (map retrieved from Google My Maps 2023).