Innovative Bridge Design Handbook Construction, Rehabilitation and Maintenance by Alessio Pipinato

Book Description

Integrating new materials, innovative construction practices, and research from a wide
variety of other innovative engineering and scientific fields (such as aerospace engineering,
materials engineering, and so on), bridge engineering represents the highest
intellectual pursuit of the construction and structural engineering fields. Moreover, as
the demand for new and retrofitted infrastructure is increasing worldwide, the interest
in the bridge engineering field—from both the economic and political points of
view—is also increasing to a remarkable extent.

This book is the culmination of 10years of challenging work, which began when I
discovered that a comprehensive work on the state of the art of bridges—including
theory, design, construction, research and development (R&D), and innovation—
was not present in the existing literature. I hadn’t found any existing manuals with
useful content on the market, as these usually include a lot of content without precise
answers to the most pressing questions relating to the everyday experience in the theory
and practice of bridge engineering and design. I realized I wanted to create an
innovative reference book that could be updated as innovations were made in the field.
This culminated in the first edition of this book.

I initially tried to make a monograph on the matter on my own, spending some
years to research books and articles during my doctoral and postdoctoral studies on
bridge engineering. I then realized that many of my colleagues, including prominent
academicians and engineers from around the world, had the same idea and sought to
write an innovative monograph on bridge engineering and design—not a manual, but a
reference book in which students, academics, and engineers could find useful information
on bridge engineering topics from not merely an academic perspective but also
including research and work in the industry. The preparation of this book has been
very intensive, with thousands of communications passing between the other authors
and myself.

After 5 years, we realized that so much progress in bridge and structural engineering
had been made that a second edition was needed.
I hope that this final work has successfully expressed our thoughts and goals. All
the chapters in this book have been “built” (this term captures the fatigue and the challenges
the contributors overcame while preparing every chapter) and presented by
leading experts in the specific area discussed—engineers and academics who have
very soundly researched their findings. If you are searching for the best design and
research handbook in this area, you can find everything you need to know about bridge
design, engineering, construction, and R&D here in this text.