TUESDAY 21TH MAY 2019, 4:00 PM
SALA DEL CAMINO – PALAZZO BROLETTO
Piazza della Vittoria, 15 – Pavia
Once upon a Time in Italy: The Tale of the Morandi Bridge
Prof. GIAN MICHELE CALVI
Full Professor of Structural Engineering
On 14 August 2018 at 11:35 AM, a relevant portion of the viaduct over the Polcevera river in Genoa collapsed, killing 43 people. The bridge was designed in the early 1960s by Riccardo Morandi, a well-known Italian engineer, and opened to the public in 1967. The seminar aims to reminisce the complete story of the bridge, from the Italian construction boom in the 1960s to some of the issues that soon arose thereafter: the strengthening intervention in the 1990s, the subsequent structural monitoring and, finally, the strengthening project never brought to fruition. Potential reasons for the collapse are discussed, together with some of the possible inadequacies of the bridge, its maintenance and loading history based on critical reflection, comparison with specific features of bridge construction practice today and results obtained using numerical models with different levels of refinement.
