Issue 46

F. Bazzucchi et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 46 (2018) 400-421; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.46.37 400 Considerations over the Italian road bridge infrastructure safety after the Polcevera viaduct collapse: past errors and future perspectives Fabio Bazzucchi, Luciana Restuccia, Giuseppe Andrea Ferro Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy fabio.bazzucchi@polito.it , https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2624-6944 luciana.restuccia@polito.it, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6999-0466 ferro@polito.it , https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0622-4203 A BSTRACT . In the last four years, Italy experienced the collapse of five road bridge: Petrulla viaduct (2014), Annone (2016) and Ancona (2017) overpasses, Fossano viaduct (2017) and Polcevera (2018) bridge. Although for deeply different reasons, the collapses occurred can all been gathered into the same common cause: the (lack of) knowledge of the effective structural condition, a serious problem that affects existing constructions. As it will be shown in the paper, different problems such as missing of the as- built designs, an appropriate construction and movement precautions, a heavy vehicle checking, and a material decay monitoring can nevertheless be addressed as an inadequate knowledge of what is happening to/in the structure. In the first section, the paper will report a short description of the failures for the five bridges, while in the second part a main set of problems involved in bridge safety and maintenance will be discussed. Finally, in the third part, a review on innovative and peculiar investigation and monitoring techniques will be illustrated. The collected results can shed new light on future perspectives for the Civil Engineering sector, sector that has to be ready for facing the challenges of preservation, restoration and/or replacement of the existing infrastructural constructions, worldwide. K EYWORDS . Bridge collapse; Existing infrastructural constructions; Prestressed concrete failure; Bridge robustness; Innovative monitoring. Citation: Bazzucchi, F., Restuccia, L. Ferro, G. A., Considerations over the Italian road bridge infrastructure safety after the Polcevera viaduct collapse: past errors and future perspectives, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 46 (2018) 400-421. Received: 28.08.2018 Accepted: 27.09.2018 Published: 01.10.2018 Copyright: © 2018 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. I NTRODUCTION he Italian infrastructural patrimony, constituted by a conspicuous number of bridges, viaducts and overpasses necessary for the orographic of the territory and for the high urban density, is strongly fragile as it is by now dated and highly vulnerable. This fragility has dramatically highlighted in the last 4 years: there have been several collapses of bridges, viaducts and overpasses, which have wiped out lives, divided cities and heavily influenced mobility. T