Structural Health Monitoring of Two Road Bridges in Como, Italy

Structural health monitoring systems have been designed and imple-mented on a group of bridges in North Italy to support a joint project between Regione Lombardia and Politecnico di Milano for the definition of criteria and guidelines for maintenance and management of the roadway infrastructure. Two of these bridges, namely the Merone bridge and the Ponte Lambro bridge, are managed by the Como Province authority and represent critical transportation links at local and regional scales. The Merone bridge is a nine-span 51-year-old structure with concrete deck I-beams and Gerber joints. The monitoring system has been installed in a lateral bridge span toward the abutment and one of the central spans. This system includes 18 displacement sensors and six tiltmeters installed in the outer span and 18 displacement potentiometer sensors, two tilt-meters, and nine cable actuated position sensors installed in the inner span. The Ponte Lambro bridge is a three-span 44-year-old tall structure with a simply supported skewed deck made by concrete I-beams. The monitoring system con-sists of 22 tiltmeters installed on the deck outer beams, piers, and abutments. Temperature sensors are also installed jointly with the tiltmeters on the deck beams. The monitoring systems are aimed at continuously recording a set of kinematic parameters in order to control over time the static response and con-dition state of the bridges under service and environmental loading. This paper provides a description of the design and implementation of the proposed sys-tems and a critical appraisal of the preliminary results of the monitoring activi-ties as a support to the general framework for maintenance and management of the roadway infrastructure at regional scale.