This month, we successfully concluded the tests of the Pont3 project at the ICITECH laboratories of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). This project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, involves the participation of three universities: Universitat Politècnica de València, Universidad de Vigo and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.
We performed several tests with different failure scenarios and monitoring strategies. For the failure scenarios, we cut some elements of our bridge span, such as diagonals, vertical elements, chords, and bracings.
Finally, we caused the bridge to collapse. As shown in the pictures, large displacements and the buckling of many elements occurred.
These tests allow us to define robust monitoring strategies that can effectively detect potential failures that may cause bridges to collapse.
