Preliminary analyses for the study of the effects of an explosive action on a long-span suspension bridge

Terrorist attacks have nowadays become an important issue for the structural design of constructions such as bridges. Indeed, during the last decades, the increase in the number of terrorist attacks has resulted in the loss of many human lives and socio-economic impact on our society. The aims of this research consist in a series of preliminary analyses in view of a study of the effects of an explosion on a long-span suspension bridge. As a suspension ridge was considered the project of the bridge over the Strait of Messina, having as main span of 3300 meters. The structure was modeled using ABAQUS/Explicit software using beams-type 3D finite element modeling. The objectives of the research are double. The first one is the study of the pressures generated by an explosive charge to model the phenomenon during numerical simulations while, the second objective, is to test different discretizations to have a reliable numerical response.