ABSTRACT

The recent disasters of the disproportionate collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa and a bridge in Kolkata have highlighted the importance of building resilient structures for our communities. The structural behavior of long-span suspension bridges after the sudden rupture of a cable was studied by M. Shoghijavan and U. Starossek. The response of a cable-stayed bridge with respect to the issue of disproportionate collapse through nonlinear dynamic analysis and the use of the applied element method. This chapter discusses the progressive collapse of a real bridge through nonlinear dynamic analysis and an applied element method (AEM) based software. The AEM is an innovative modeling method that adopts the concept of discrete cracking. Besides, positive contributions to the risk reduction in bridge structures of transportation networks may come from structural control and health monitoring solutions. The analyzed bridge is the Yong-He Bridge, one of the first cable-stayed bridges constructed in mainland China and opened to traffic in December 1987.