Safety monitoring of the cable stayed bridge in the Commercial Harbor of Venice, Italy

Theoretical and experimental investigation (ambient vibration tests and permanent monitoring system) on the structural behavior of a curved cable-stayed bridge is presented in the paper. The quoted bridge was erected in the Commercial Harbor of Venice-Marghera, Italy, and opened to traffic on January 2007. The bridge is characterized by six curved spans, of which the main two of 105 m and 126 m are cablestayed, with the stays arranged on a single plane and connected to the centerline of the composite steel and concrete deck. Furthermore, the pre-stressed concrete pylon is single and inclined. As a consequence of the spatial structural arrangement, the dynamic behavior of the deck appears very complex both in bending and torsion. The peculiar architectural layout of the bridge added significant difficulties in both accurate structural analysis and assessment of "as built" behavior. Hence ambient vibration modal testing were carried out after erection and a detailed FE model was tuned and validated on such data. The special geometric layout of the bridge and its infrastructural role provided also a strong motivation for the installation of a permanent monitoring system. The paper describes the characteristics of the monitoring system, based on the use of the SOFO™ fiber optic sensor family and conceived for both static and dynamic monitoring. A number of considerations are carried out on the capability of the quoted monitoring system to assess in due time the presence of unexpected damage on the most critical zones of the bridge, namely inclined pylon and stay-cables. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London.