The Monitoring System of the New Filomena Delli Castelli Cable-Stayed Bridge

Bridges play a primary role in the road and railway networks, and their inoperability due to damage or collapses following natural disasters or due to ageing, have impacts from both the social and the economic perspectives. For these reasons, an accurate control of their health conditions is of paramount importance, especially for bridges located on strategic roadways. This paper deals with the design and the installation of the structural health monitoring system of the newly built “Filomena Delli Castelli” cable-stayed bridge over the Saline river, in Central Italy. The bridge has a steel-concrete composite deck about 190 m long, with a peculiar plan shape given by the presence of a pedestrian and cycling path with curvilinear layout in the downstream side of the deck. The monitoring system is described, discussing about the adopted instrumentations and their location for both static and dynamic measurements. Moreover, the preliminary tests and studies that supported the design of the monitoring system, are also presented. Then, issues relevant to data acquisition, transfer and storage are addressed. Preliminary data from the monitoring system are also shown, and considerations about their usefulness in a structural health monitoring process are provided.