FCC Construcción and Convensa, through the road renovation and infrastructure improvement project of line 9 of the Alicante tram network, section 1, participate in fatigue limit state studies together with the ICITECH Institute of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV).

Along the layout of the works there are two metallic viaducts (Ferrandet and Quisi), built in 1914. These are metal bridges, with riveted joints, which save ravines with stacks of more than 40 meters in height. They constitute, together with the rest of the railway line, an important heritage of Valencian civil engineering.

Within the works, the Ferrandet viaduct has been dismantled, replacing it with a new one, and the Quisi viaduct has been maintained and rehabilitated. Since this viaduct dates from 1914, and since the current standard of design life for a bridge is 100 years, the FGV Operations Directorate indicates the need to evaluate its remaining life according to the state fatigue limit. As the two original viaducts are built from practically identical sections, it is possible to know the behavior of the Quisi by testing the sections of Ferrandet that have been disassembled.

Collapses such as the Polcevera viaduct, in Genoa, in 2018, or the bridge of the I-35W highway in Minneapolis in 2007, have placed the spotlight on the maintenance and safety of our structures.

Within this study of the fatigue limit state is being carried out, inside the laboratories of the ICITECH Institute of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), the fatigue test of a complete section (a complete isostatic gap) of the old Ferrandet viaduct disassembled. The aim is to guarantee the fatigue behavior of this last viaduct, after a century of service. It is a world-class first-rate essay in the field of maintenance and conservation of Valencian civil engineering heritage. It is one of the very few that have been made, in the world, of this type, on a real scale (1: 1).