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Risk Control and Performance Design of Bridge Structures

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Civil Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2025 | Viewed by 3679

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Interests: bridge structures; steel and composite structures; concrete-filled steel tubes; novel structures against blast and impact loads

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Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Interests: bridge engineering; earthquake engineering; seismic resilience; ground motion simulation

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Guest Editor
Department of Construction, Civil Engineering and Architecture (DICEA), Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131 Ancona, Italy
Interests: earthquake engineering; structural analysis; structural design; soil-structure interaction; bridge engineering; dynamic characterization; dynamic experimental tests
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Bridge structures are an important part of transportation networks and urban lifeline engineering. During their service life, bridges not only have to withstand traffic loads, but also are exposed to multiple dynamic hazards, such as earthquakes, vehicle/ship collisions, and accidental and terrorist explosions. These extreme dynamic loads can cause severe damage to the bridge components and structures, and weaken the structural performance, which may lead to catastrophic consequences with massive personnel injuries and fatalities, enormous economic loss, and immeasurable social impact. Therefore, in the designing and operation of bridges, it is of great importance to reasonably assess the effects of extreme loads on bridges and to reduce the probability or impact of potential hazards through the application of advanced risk control strategies and design concepts.

The aim of this Special Issue is to showcase recent advances in innovative research and engineering technologies that mitigate risks and enhance the performance of bridges under earthquakes, impacts, blasts and so on. These include the development and application of advanced materials in bridge design and construction; the adoption of advanced simulation and modeling techniques for dynamic response analysis of bridges under extreme loads; the development of artificial intelligence-based models for rapid/real-time prediction of the effects of extreme events; the retrofitting and strengthening approaches to enhance the bridge structural performance; and the integration of smart sensing and monitoring systems for early detection of potential risks and failures. Both original research articles and reviews are welcome. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Minghong Li
Dr. Yuanzheng Lin
Dr. Sandro Carbonari
Prof. Dr. Weiqiang Wang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • bridge structures
  • dynamic multi-hazards
  • dynamic response analysis
  • structural performance assessment
  • bridge design
  • risk control and management
  • artificial intelligence
  • retrofitting and strengthening approaches
  • smart sensing and monitoring

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 5832 KiB  
Article
Bridge Deflection Prediction Based on Cascaded Residual Smoothing and Multiscale Spatiotemporal Attention Network
by Xi Wu, Hai-Min Qian, Juan Liao, Liu-Sheng He and Cheng-Quan Wang
Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(6), 3147; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15063147 - 13 Mar 2025
Viewed by 204
Abstract
Bridge deflection values are significant for their health and safety, but current methods for predicting bridge deflection suffer from problems such as anomalous data and low prediction accuracy. To solve the problems of anomalous bias and loss of short-term trend in traditional smoothing [...] Read more.
Bridge deflection values are significant for their health and safety, but current methods for predicting bridge deflection suffer from problems such as anomalous data and low prediction accuracy. To solve the problems of anomalous bias and loss of short-term trend in traditional smoothing methods, this paper proposes a preprocessing method for cascade residual smoothing. The method firstly uses Gaussian filtering to initially remove the high-frequency noise in the signal and retain the overall trend. Then, the residuals of the initial filtering and the original data are smoothed by quadratic exponential smoothing to extract the short-term trend in the deflection data, which is favorable for the data to have the advantages of both stabilization and retention of small fluctuations. In addition, to simultaneously acquire the temporal dependence and spatial features between long- and short-term temporal signals, this paper proposes a multiscale spatial attention network based on Multiscale Convolutional Neural Networks (MSCNNs), Gated Recurrent Units (GRUs), and self-attention (SA). The method obtains multi-level sensory field spatial information within each period through the MSCNN, focuses on the connection between different time steps using a GRU, and employs SA to automatically focus on the deflection features that have a significant impact and ignore unimportant perturbation variations, thus improving the prediction ability of the model. In this paper, compared with CNN-Attention-LSTM, the MAE is reduced by 25.79%, the RMSE is reduced by 24.69%, and the R2 is increased by 2.36%, which proves the superiority and advancement of the method. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Risk Control and Performance Design of Bridge Structures)
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15 pages, 3464 KiB  
Article
Retrofitting of a Multi-Span Simply Supported Bridge into a Semi-Integral Bridge
by Zhen Xu, Xiaoye Luo, Khaled Sennah, Baochun Chen and Yizhou Zhuang
Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(1), 455; https://doi.org/10.3390/app15010455 - 6 Jan 2025
Viewed by 675
Abstract
Thousands of multi-span, simply supported beam bridges with short or medium spans have been built in China. They often suffer from problems of cracks in the link slabs over piers, and the deterioration and damage of deck expansion joints at abutments. To address [...] Read more.
Thousands of multi-span, simply supported beam bridges with short or medium spans have been built in China. They often suffer from problems of cracks in the link slabs over piers, and the deterioration and damage of deck expansion joints at abutments. To address these problems, one approach is to retrofit them by converting the simply supported box beams into continuous structures over the piers and jointless bridges over the abutments. This paper discusses the design methodology and details for retrofitting the Jinpu Bridge in Zhangzhou, Fujian, China, from a simply supported bridge into a semi-integral bridge, in which semi-fixed dowel joints are used to connect the superstructure and the substructure, including piers and abutments. Simultaneously, the finite element software is used to calculate the internal forces and displacements of the structure. The analysis reveals an 11.1% reduction in the maximum positive moment at the midspan of the main beam in the semi-integral bridge compared to the simply supported bridge. However, the shear forces at the interior pier increase by 6.4%. According to the response spectrum analysis, the maximum longitudinal displacement of the semi-integral bridge’s main beam is 11.6 mm, reduced by 80.1% compared to the simply supported bridge under a dead load and earthquake effects. The maximum bending moment and shear force on the pier of the semi-integral bridge are 984.7 kN·m and 312.6 kN, respectively, both below their ultimate bearing capacities. The maximum displacement at the top of the pier is 7.7 mm, which is below the allowable 52.4 mm displacement. The calculated results conform to the design requirements specified by the code. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Risk Control and Performance Design of Bridge Structures)
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12 pages, 3360 KiB  
Article
RC Bridge Concrete Surface Cracks and Bug-Holes Detection Using Smartphone Images Based on Flood-Filling Noise Reduction Algorithm
by Haimin Qian, Honglei Sun, Ziyang Cai, Fangshi Gao, Tongyuan Ni and Ye Yuan
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(21), 10014; https://doi.org/10.3390/app142110014 - 2 Nov 2024
Viewed by 984
Abstract
Noise reduction is a key process in digital image detection technology for concrete cracks and bug-holes. In this study, the threshold range of the flood-filling noise reduction algorithm was investigated experimentally. Surface cracks and bug-holes in RC bridge concrete were detected using mobile [...] Read more.
Noise reduction is a key process in digital image detection technology for concrete cracks and bug-holes. In this study, the threshold range of the flood-filling noise reduction algorithm was investigated experimentally. Surface cracks and bug-holes in RC bridge concrete were detected using mobile terminal images based on the flood-filling noise reduction algorithm. The results showed that the error range was within 10% when threshold range Θ was confined in [60, 80] as the crack width was from 0.1 mm to 2 mm. It is suitable that the threshold range Θ was selected as 70 while the measured crack width range was 0.2 mm to 2 mm. However, by reducing the values of the threshold range Θ to 50, the miscalculation was obviously eliminated. The influences of reducing values of the threshold range on bug-holes of the equivalent diameter and area were not significant. It is suitable that the threshold range Θ was elected on 50 to detect bug-holes in the concrete surface. The threshold range can be selected as a suitable value for the detection of cracks and bug-holes in order to reduce noise. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Risk Control and Performance Design of Bridge Structures)
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11 pages, 5364 KiB  
Article
Application of Generalized S-Transform in the Measurement of Dynamic Elastic Modulus
by Lei Wang, Yang Gao, Hongguang Liu, Guoping Fu and Dunqiang Lu
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(14), 5995; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14145995 - 9 Jul 2024
Viewed by 823
Abstract
Resonance is commonly used for in situ measurement of the dynamic elastic modulus to evaluate the strength of concrete samples. Many researchers are also exploring the application of this convenient measurement technology for safety monitoring. Nevertheless, the presence of cracks and variations in [...] Read more.
Resonance is commonly used for in situ measurement of the dynamic elastic modulus to evaluate the strength of concrete samples. Many researchers are also exploring the application of this convenient measurement technology for safety monitoring. Nevertheless, the presence of cracks and variations in curing conditions within samples can impact the resonance frequency range, potentially leading to potential inaccuracies in measurements. In order to improve the measurement accuracy of resonance frequency, this study introduces the Generalized S-Transform (GST) algorithm for measuring the dynamic elastic modulus, which utilizes its high time-frequency resolution to scan the power peak-point in non-stationary and transient excitation signals to determine the resonance frequency. For concrete materials with lower consistency, the experimental results verify the high accuracy of this algorithm in measuring resonance frequency compared with Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). This provides a reference for using the algorithm to measure the dynamic elastic modulus in civil engineering applications, such as buildings and bridges. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Risk Control and Performance Design of Bridge Structures)
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