PSI - Issue 84

Francesco La Fortezza et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 84 (2026) 368–375

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managed by the Group’s concessionaires and performing a structural check on the structural elements of a given structure during the passage of an exceptional transport. In addition, a web application was developed to accelerate authorization requests for the transit of exceptional vehicles, ensuring that all structures along the route indicated by the transport companies are analysed. In the following paragraphs, the operation of the TES software and the web application will be illustrated, including

some example screenshots of the web platform. 3.1. Calculation criteria of the TES software

The software provides that multiple calculation models can be considered for each bridge. A good choice could be to create one model for the global behaviour of the deck, with which to check girders and cross-beams, and a smaller model to account for local issues, for example those related to the slab. Regardless of its size and the checks for which it was conceived, every finite element model must be linear elastic and can be prepared without particular limitations, except that it must present a cloud of nodes representing the part of the structure (usually the slab) on which traffic loads will be applied. In the following figure an example of an FEM model used by the software is shown. The slab nodes are spaced approximately 0.5 meters apart.

Fig. 1. Deck with beams, cross-beams and slab – FEM model

As normally happens in routine structural checks, to determine the outcome of the analysis some sectional checks must be carried out, typically bending moment at mid-span of the beams and shear at the ends. For each verification case an admissible limit value Q i (with sign) must be computed for a single external action. For example, if a bending moment check is to be performed, the maximum value to which the moment due to traffic loads can reach must first be determined. It is also possible to carry out the check considering the interaction between two types of actions acting simultaneously (for example bending moment and shear, bending moment and torsional moment, etc.) and assign a limit represented by a line instead of a single value, as illustrated in the following figure. By setting multiple checks of this type, it is also possible to recreate a domain of more complex geometric shapes. The bridge check is globally satisfied if Q i >E i >0 or Q i