Analysis of bridge failures in India from 1977 to 2017

Abstract

The data related to the failure of bridges that occurred during the period 1977–2017 in India have been collected from various sources, including print and electronic media. The data have been classified under various categories based on their material, cause of failure and others. More than 2130 bridges (excluding culverts and pedestrian bridges) have failed to provide intended service or got collapsed during various phases of construction in recent four decades. Reasons for failure of bridges during their service life as well as during the construction phase have been analysed. The average age of failure of bridges is 34.5 years, which is very low compared to the expected design life. A comparison of the failure cases is made with those from available literature and observed some unique failure patterns of bridges in India. The present study highlights that the collection of data made from open sources can provide information for drawing meaningful conclusions about the service life of bridges. Thus, helps in planning the infrastructural assets management and extending their service life.

KEYWORDS:

• bridge construction
• bridge failure
• failures
• infrastructure planning
• serviceability
• structural performance

Acknowledgements

Authors gratefully acknowledge the source of media whose references are given in the text or the database without which this study could not have been completed. The first author would like to express his sincere gratitude to his mentor Dr. D.N. Trikha, former Professor at IIT Roorkee and Director, CSIR-SERC, Ghaziabad, India. Authors acknowledge the useful advice given by Y. Tsompanakis of Technical University of Crete, Greece, the editor and the reviewers of this manuscript.

Funding

The Department of Science & Technology of Govt. of India provided the financial support through the project-CRRI-GAP4539 under grant DST/TSG/STS/2011/43.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.