BRIDGE THEORY AND DESIGN 2023/24 – POLIMI – ing. civile -Fabio Biondini

ARGOMENTI TRATTATI, anno 2023/24:

1. Role of a bridge. Bridge costs. Life cycle. Bridge typologies. Reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges. Composite and steel bridges. Sectional geometries: grillage slabs, voided slabs, box girders. Arch bridges. Cable stayed and suspended bridges. Construction methods. Cast-in-place and precast prestressed bridges. Span by span construction. Prestressed segmental bridges.
2. Structural reliability. Highway and railway bridge loads. Serviceability and limit state design. International codes of practice.
3. Influence lines theory. Influence surfaces theory (Pucher, Homberg). Analysis of the local effects on deck slabs and on deck slab cantilevers.
4. Bridge deck analysis. Orthotropic plate analysis. Grillage and space frame analysis. Voided slab decks. Special methods of analysis. Transversal load distribution theories. Engesser-Courbon and Massonnet methods.
5. Box girder bridges. Thin-walled structures theory. Shear and torsion in mono- and multicell box girders. Shear lag, warping and distortional effects. Folded plate theory. Finite strip method. Thermal stresses.
6. Skew and curved decks.
7. Long span bridges. Segmentally erected bridges. Balanced cantilever bridges. Dimensioning criteria. Time dependent behaviour.
8. Bridge piers. Mechanical and geometrical nonlinearities. Piers with varying sections.
9. Arch bridges. Line of thrust. Axis of the arch as funicular line of the applied loads. One/two/three hinges arches. Hingeless arches. Influence lines. Analytical approach to Maillart arch analysis. Transversal load distribution in Maillart type bridges.
10. Cable theory. Mechanical properties. Catenary. Parabola. Comparison of cable shapes. Non-linear behaviour of the cables. Influence of the sag on the cable stiffness. Dischinger-Ernst E-modulus.
11. Cable stayed bridges. General background. Construction techniques. Preliminary design of stays, antenna, and deck. Numerical modelling.
12. Suspension bridges. General background. Construction techniques. Rankine, Melan, and Timoshenko theories. Analytical solutions. Numerical modelling.
13. Aeroelastic stability of suspension bridges. A simplified approach to critical wind speed calculation.
14. Foundations. Approaching slabs. Bearing supports. Anti-seismic devices. Detailing.