Critical Issues of Typical Existing Masonry Road Bridges Handled by the Province of Caserta

Due to bridge collapses recently occurred, it is now very clear that the conservation and the preservation of existing infrastructures is a real priority. On the other hand, many of the existing bridges were built before the first half of the last century on the basis of outdated design criteria. Therefore, they are affected by a significant ancientness, a bad state of conservation and structural deficiencies, also because of lack of maintenance. The present paper focuses on recurring structural issues affecting existing masonry bridges, which represent a large portion of the existing Italian infrastructural heritage. The main goal is to depict the current Italian scenario, in order to identify common structural deficiencies affecting such bridge typology. To this purpose, some typical bridges belonging to the roadway network of the Province of Caserta are examined. The study, which is part of a wider activity aimed at implement methodologies for the assessment and preservation of the existing bridges, shows that the considered bridges are affected by common structural deficiencies and defeats and therefore could set the stage for a wider investigation aimed at defining suitable intervention criteria that might be applied to existing European infrastructures.