ETLV THE GENOA BRIDGE DISASTER T ITEC-AC

ITV NEWS - Why did the Morandi bridge in Genoa collapse  ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gefkuuNOCf4

Take a close look. In the 50 year history of the Morandi Bridge is written in the

patches, reinforcements and repairs covering every span. Among Italian engineers

the bridge was notorious for its nearly constant and costly maintenance, much of it

linked to a unique pre stressed concrete design.

David KNIGHT : ʺ with such a catastrophic failure, a failure that appeared to happen

at such speed, from the images that we’ve seen, suggests that there's been a

failure in one of the prestressing tendons and it has released a lot of stress over a

short period of time ʺ

Using steel cables or tendons to prestressed concrete to make it stronger was

pioneered by the bridge’s designer Ricardo Morandi but back in the _1960s_ the

cables weren’t well protected from corrososion .

It's why investigators will be drawn to some key areas. The first of these structures,

the bridge’s stay cables on nearly all modern bridges they are exposed steel but in
ETLV THE GENOA BRIDGE DISASTER T ITEC-AC

Genoa they were concealed _in__ concrete, that meant _corrosion couldn't be

seen.

Major repairs to strengthen the decaying stays were carried out on just one section

of the bridge in the 1990s. It survived. The second area of interest will be the now

collapsed tower. It too could have had corrosion concealed in concrete. And then,

there's the _roadway_ itself. This has undergone nearly constant repairs since the

1970s after it began to bend and twist.

The stormy weather at the time of the collapse could have been a factor. high winds

have been linked to other bridge disasters but ongoing maintenance can't be

ignored.

Antonio BRENCICH : ʺ I said 2 years ago that bridge are like cars : when used too

often, they need to be changed, when the maintenance costs reach or surpass the

cost of restructuring, when there are no intervals between maintenance works.

Since this bridge was under constant maintenance, the time had come to consider a

remplacement maintenanceʺ

Maintenance problems made this design wasn't widely copied but nonetheless the

investigations into the collapse will have to make sure the rest of Italy’s

infrastructure has stood the test of time.