The Hidden Energy That Retains Bridges From Falling

Steel truss bridges are constructed by connecting many metallic bars into a powerful, load-bearing construction. But generally, if one half breaks, the injury spreads and causes the entire bridge to break down. Other instances, the bridge stays standing, even with a damaged piece. Until now, scientists haven’t absolutely understood why.

In a brand new examine, researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València and the University of Vigo found hidden backup methods inside these bridges. These secondary resistance mechanisms assist the construction keep sturdy even after a key half fails.

Their habits is surprisingly just like spider webs, which may maintain working even after components are broken.

José M. Adam, researcher on the ICITECH Institute of the Universitat Politècnica de València, and Coordinator of the Pont3 mission that this work varieties a part of, stated, “We have shown that, just as spider webs can adapt and continue to trap prey after suffering damage, damaged steel truss bridges may still be able to withstand loads even greater than those they bear under normal conditions of use and not collapse.”

Engineers have lengthy puzzled over why some metal truss bridges collapse after a small half fails, whereas others keep standing with barely a hiccup.

Their analysis reveals that these bridges have secondary resistance mechanisms, like backup methods, that kick in when a main element fails. Instead of collapsing, the construction adapts and redistributes the load. It’s like a spider net: even when a part of it’s broken, the remaining retains working.

These findings open new doorways for designing safer, extra resilient bridges, enhancing how we monitor, consider, and restore growing older infrastructure, and setting new requirements for bridge robustness within the face of disasters.

“All this with one fundamental objective: improving the safety of these infrastructures, which are so significant and widespread in transport networks. And the key lies, once again, in Nature; last year, we discovered how to prevent buildings from collapsing in the event of an extreme event by imitating lizards.”

“This time, we have learned from spider webs, whose behavior is similar to steel truss bridges. We have demonstrated this by comparing our work with another study published in Nature in 2012, which focused precisely on spider webs,” concludes José M. Adam.

Journal Reference:

1. Juan C. Reyes-Suárez et al, Latent resistance mechanisms of metal truss bridges after vital failures, Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09300-8