To achieve the project objectives, the following actions have been taken:
- A review of the effects of floods on masonry arch bridges has been carried out to identify the most critical actions induced by floods on bridges (scour, impact of floating masses, buoyancy) and the relevant failure modes and damage mechanisms (e.g. pier cracking, arch barrel cracking, damage of spandrel walls). The information and data collected, mainly based on news reporting damages or collapses of bridges during recent floods, have shown that scour is the most common cause of failure.
- An evaluation of state-of-the-art in modelling masonry arch bridges, including a critical assessment of the tools already developed at the Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) group at Imperial College, has been performed, and the parts of the modelling strategy requiring further development have been identified.
- A modelling strategy has been defined for simulating the effects of scour and of other flood-induced actions, by accounting for the complex geometry of multi-span arch bridge models and the interaction between the various components (arch, backfill, foundation, soil). The proposed strategy employs the nonlinear structural analysis code ADAPTIC, developed in the CSM group at Imperial College. The adopted mesoscale masonry model implemented in ADAPTIC enables an accurate representation of the actual masonry bond for the masonry arch barrel and the piers. Moreover, this detailed 3D description for masonry components is incorporated within a partitioning modelling strategy enabling parallel computation, which significantly enhances computational efficiency when used in combination with the high performance computing resources available at Imperial College.
- A validation study of the proposed modelling strategy has been carried out by simulating experimental tests carried out on single-span and multi-span arch bridges under vertical loads and under scour-induced settlements.
- A probabilistic framework for flood risk assessment analysis, with particular focus on the scour accumulation problem, has been developed, also based on the continuous collaboration with the partner of the secondment, Prof. Costantino Manes, and visits to University of Southampton University and Polytechnic University of Turin.
- The study results have been published/submitted for publication in journals and presented at various international conferences and seminars. The outcomes and capabilities of the proposed modelling strategy have been presented also to engineering firms and agencies involved in the flood risk assessment of bridges in the UK. The participation to the Imperial College festival in 2018 is envisaged as an additional outreach activity.
