Vulnerability of bridges to fire

Even if recent effort in developing methodology and measures for design structures against fire and explosions has been mostly focused on buildings, bridges can also be very sensitive to those actions, as witnesses by some recent bridge accidents, which caused major economic losses and also endangered people safety in few cases.

Purpose of this paper is making a focus on the state of the art of the research and current regulations concerning the response of bridges to fire. Several cases of bridge fires are reported and a focus is made on the occurrence and consequence of bridge fires, considering both the costs deriving by structural damages and by limited serviceability and other indirect societal aspects.

Few cases of recent bridge fire are reviewed in detail and structural consequences are highlighted, distinguishing between damages directly induced by fire and damages induced by local failures.