PSI - Issue 84

Marco Pirrò et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 552–559

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Fig. 8. Estimated deflection curves (July 13, 2022, at 08:34) due to the passage of a heavy vehicle that enters from the left-hand side of the downstream side (a), passes through the bridge's central span (b)-(c) and gradually exits from the right-hand side (d) 6. Conclusions A promising method of monitoring bridge deflections is presented in this paper, based on the rotations measured by inclinometers. The present method involves the approximation of deformed shape of the bridge through polynomial functions and by imposing boundary conditions in correspondence of the supports: in the specific case of the Dolo overpass, it is demonstrated that the procedure based on estimating the deflected shapes using only longitudinal rotations leads to minimum errors when comparing the estimated values the ones independently measured by LVDT sensors. In the second part of the paper, preliminary results of a strategy for real time monitoring of bridges are presented; the monitoring strategy is based on the definition of threshold rotations and involves the use of measured rotations to evaluate the deflection curve at the time instants corresponding to threshold rotations exceedance.