In order to simulate the aqueduct damage and evaluate the structure safety in a reasonable way, aqueduct failure characteristics were summarized and analyzed based on failure living examples existing research results of numerical simulations and model tests. The typical failure characteristics of aqueducts caused by earthquake, high wind, flood and durability were summarized. The possible failure modes of the pile foundation, the support structure and the aqueduct body for aqueduct structures of simple supported beam typeswere mainly analyzed. Firstly, the failure modes of the pile foundation includes three types, insufficientsoilbearing, insufficient compression strength of the pile and the displacement of the pile tip exceeding limitingvalues. Secondly, bending or shear failure may occur at the pier-bottom. Shear failure may occur at the corbel. Failures tend to occur at the ends of a bent fame column and around the joints of a coupling beam. Thirdly, failure types of bending, shear or shear-bending may occur at the longitudinal beam. The end floor beams, the mid-span and ends of a bottom plate, the bottom of side walls, the bottom of rib plates and the upper tie bars are easy to be damaged. Furthermore, there are many durabilitydamages, such as cracks, concrete carbonation, concrete scaling, leakage, reinforcement corrosion and seal damage.