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Reliability analysis of Colle d’Isarco bridge

A practical example of stochastic failure simulation and reliability assessment of existing bridge structure represents cantilever beam bridge on the Brennero highway in Italy with a length of 167.5 m. Evaluation of the measured data in combination with the stochastic nonlinear analysis should be utilized for efficient bridge maintenance (Bergmeister 2003).

The fully post-tensioned box-girder bridge built in 1969 is cast-in-place balanced cantilever beam with varying girder depth. The mid-span has a length of 91 m, the cantilever beams have a length of 59 m and 17.5 m, the total length of the analyzed bridge structure is 167.5 m. The height of the box girder varies from 10.80 m over the middle support to 2.85 m in the mid-span. The bridge is cast from concrete B500 and is reinforced with mild steel BST 500. The post-tension tendons system consists of 211 strands of St 1350/1500.

For the reliability assessment of the Colle d’Isarco bridge the resistance with mean value of 235 kN/m and standard deviation of 18 kN/m was assumed. The reliability index as a function of the mean line load is plotted in Figure. The horizontal line represents the target reliability index 4.7 as specified by Eurocode (2001) for 1 year.

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