PONTE della MUSICA (Rome, Italy)

The bridge “Ponte della Musica” (entitled to Armando Trovajoli after two years after its inauguration), is an arch bridge and overpasses the Tevere river connecting the Flaminio and Vittoria neighbourhoods. In particular, some spaces and building, crucial for the cultural life of the city, are reachable thanks to it: the Auditorium “Parco della Musica” (designed by Renzo Piano), Villa Glori’s park, the MAXXI Museum (designed by Zaha Adid) and the Olympic  Theatre (containing the sport  complex of Foro Italico), the youth hostel, Monte Mario green area, the Rai Auditorium. It can be considered a bridge (and not a footbridge) because public transport is allowed upon it, but, apart from that, it is reserved to cyclists and pedestrians.

The structure consists in a deck, 190 meters of span, sustained by means of two segmental arches supported by reinforced concrete platforms creating a sort of square on the river.

A sectional model was employed in the wind tunnel to perform aerodynamic forces measurements. In particular, static tests in different wind barriers porosity configurations were carried out, next to aeroelastic tests in two-degrees-of-freedom. A specific model, realized to keep the Scruton number similitude, was employed to investigate the susceptibility to vortex-induced vibrations (always considering different wind-barriers porosities). The sensitivity to a porous grid installed under the bridge deck was considered too.