Seismic assessment of old existing masonry arch bridges: an application to a case study

Masonry arch bridges are widely spread in Europe and they still serve nowadays many roads characterized by an important vehicular traffic. Moreover, most of them result inadequate since they have been designed mainly for vertical traffic loads by neglecting the lateral earthquake action. For this reason the seismic assessment of old masonry arch bridges becomes a complex matter of structural engineering in conjunction with the fact that, very often, the materials deteriorate and worn away because of cyclic vertical loads and weathering conditions. This paper presents the seismic assessment of an Italian multispan masonry arch bridge built before the Second World War. The bridge is actually in service and crosses the " Cavone River " (in the Southern Italy), from which takes the name. A series of nonlinear analyses are performed in order to investigate the nonlinear response of the bridge and for evaluating its seismic performance.