EXISTING BRIDGES IN ITALY: A REINFORCED CONCRETE MID-CENTURY CASE STUDY

In the framework of an ongoing research project which involved the Politecnico di Milano and the Lombardy region, the paper presents the preliminary investigations conducted on a reinforced concrete post-World War II bridge. The discussed infrastructure was selected, among others, as a pilot case for the development of novel guidelines aimed at: i) defining a first-level methodology for the priority-setting of maintenance operations on existing bridges belonging to the regional road network; and ii) establishing harmonized rules for the structural monitoring of bridge infrastructures. The results presented in the paper confirm the importance of historical investigations and highlight the conflict between economically-constrained diagnostic campaigns and the requirement to maximize the knowledge level of a structure that, after 70 years of operation and a minor maintenance, still carries increasing volumes of traffic loads.