DUVI – 03/09/2025
A team from the Research Center for Technologies, Energy and Industrial Processes at the University of Vigo, CINTECX and the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has just published in Nature the results of a study in which they discovered why bridges—specifically, steel lattice bridges—do not collapse when affected by catastrophic events, such as impacts, earthquakes, etc. They concluded that their behavior is similar to that of spider webs, demonstrating that, just as webs adapt and continue to catch prey after being damaged, steel bridges are capable of resisting such events without collapsing.
“We demonstrated that, just like spider webs can adapt and continue catching prey after being damaged, damaged steel lattice bridges can still withstand loads even greater than those they support under normal usage conditions and not collapse,” highlights José M. Adam, researcher at the ICITECH Institute of the Universitat Politècnica de València and coordinator of the Pont3 project, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, which includes the work carried out.
Bridges are critical elements of transportation networks, and their collapse can have very serious consequences, including fatalities and economic losses that can reach millions of euros for each day of closure. “Moreover, in the face of increasingly intense and unpredictable natural events, and environmental changes that are accelerating the deterioration of bridges, it is essential to ensure that these structures do not collapse due to a local failure. This is the focus of our study,” adds Belén Riveiro, researcher at CINTECX and head of the Pont3 subproject at the University of Vigo.
Some do, some don’t
Until now, it was unclear why initial failures in certain elements propagate disproportionately in some cases, while in others they barely affect the bridge’s functionality.
In their work, researchers from the University of Vigo and the Universitat Politècnica de València discovered and characterized the secondary mechanisms that allow these bridges to be more resilient—developing latent resistance—and not collapse. “Thanks to this, we are able to understand how they can continue to bear loads after the initial failure of an element,” adds Carlos Lázaro, principal investigator of the Pont3 subproject at UPV.
Imitating and learning from nature: from lizards to spider webs
The work of the UVigo and UPV team provides new insights for designing safer and more resilient bridges in the face of extreme events, and contributes to improving strategies for monitoring, assessing, and reinforcing existing bridges. Furthermore, their conclusions may help define new robustness requirements for steel lattice bridges.
“All of this with a fundamental goal: to improve the safety of these infrastructures, which are so important and widespread in transportation networks. And once again, the key lies in nature; last year we discovered how to prevent buildings from collapsing during extreme events by imitating lizards. This time, we learned from spider webs, whose behavior resembles that of steel lattice bridges. We demonstrated this by comparing our work with another study published in Nature in 2012, precisely about spider webs,” concludes José M. Adam.