Advanced methodologies of damage identification in railways viaducts and bridges - Geometric reconstruction and load identification

The increasing demand for structural monitoring of highway viaducts and bridges necessitates new advanced methodologies.This dissertation presents a new contribution on the themes of geometric reconstruction and load identication integrating these two aspects to enhance bridge assessment. First, an inverse identication method based on a bending-torsional coupled beam model and Dierential Evolution is proposed to estimate vehicular loads from dynamic responses. This approach enables the identication of load magnitude, inter-axle distances, and eccentricity also under noisy conditions. Secondly, during the visiting period scheduled by the National Operative Ph.D. Program at the company Breng s.r.l., a structured workow has been developed to convert photographic and laser surveys into high-delity geometric meshes for structural analysis. By pursuing accuracy and interoperability, this method overcomes limitations in data transfer across software platforms. Experimental case studies validate its eectiveness, with considerations for retopologization and Building Information Modeling integration. Together, these methodologies can improve the accuracy and reliability of bridge monitoring, contributing to safer and more ecient infrastructure management.