Dynamic behaviour of the railway steel bridge crossing Po river at Ostiglia: global and local analysis

Structural health monitoring is a very important phase of the maintenance of a civil work. In fact, thanks to the installation of a system able to monitor the conditions of a structure, it is possible to verify how this same structure responds to the loads to which it is subjected and to identify potentially damaged zones. Specifically, a railway bridge crossing a river undergoes stresses and deformations caused by the passage of trains, earthquake events and interactions with water. The INFRASAFE project aims to investigate all these aspects in order to guarantee a total monitoring of a specific structure - the bridge at Revere crossing Po river – in the environmental surrounding where it is placed. This research thesis is part of such project in a sense that it constitutes the preliminary analytical phase prior the experimental campaigns in the site. The truss structure will be modeled in Straus7 and a modal analysis will be performed in order to determine its frequencies and vibration modes. In addition, the axle loads of the real trains passing on the bridge will be considered for a linear static analysis. The results of such analysis will be investigated and the most stressed steel junction will be locally modeled in order to study its fatigue capacity.