Investigation of Bridge Collapse Phenomena due to Heavy Rain Floods: Structural, Hydraulic, and Hydrological Analysis

Abstract The heavy rainfall that occurred in western Japan in July 2018 caused massive and widespread damage to social infrastructures and lifelines. Certain cases that can be used to specifically and quantitatively analyze the damage situation and the cause of the damaged bridge groups are valuable for overcoming structural and complex engineering problems. Such cases can be used to identify the causes of the failure and the analysis progress, and they will help improve the design elements and construction method of bridges in the future. They could also yield such measures as washing out of the bridge at the time of flood. In this study, we conducted a field survey of the washed out Misasa railway bridge, and we evaluated the conditions that caused the failure based on hydrological, hydraulic, and structural analyses at the time of the flood, based on a field survey of the affected bridge. These analyses will help obtain design elements for small and medium bridge structures and countermeasures in the future. We focus on the collapse issue of the 1st Misasa Railway Bridge, wherein the collapse trigger of structural stability can be evaluated through its collapse mechanism. The structural analysis reveals the flood hydrodynamic force on the bridge girder during the flood that caused the collapse. In particular, when the hydrodynamic force of the water flow acts on the bridge girder part, the flood hydrodynamic force that led to the collapse of the bridge is estimated from the engineering point of view of structural stability. Based on the failure processes and conditions revealed by the analyses, we identified design elements that can help increase the resistivity of bridge structures on small rivers against floods with effective methods.