Locality of Truck Loads and Adequacy of Bridge Design Load
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 10, Issue 5
Abstract
United States highway bridge design has advanced into the era of risk-based practice, milestoned by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Load and Resistance Factor Design Bridge Design Specifications. On the other hand, national and state design codes cannot specifically account for localized risk for each bridge site, which may have significantly different loading conditions from the national average. This issue is focused on here, as related to the adequacy of current bridge design loads for sites in the state of Michigan. The structural reliability indices are calculated for a randomly selected sample of new bridges from the Michigan inventory, including four major girder bridge types. Weigh-in-motion truck load data collected in Michigan are used to statistically characterize the truck load effect in the bridges’ primary members for moment and shear at critical cross sections. The reliability indices are found to vary significantly among the bridge sites and types investigated. Many of them indicate inadequate design load for the Detroit area.
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Acknowledgments
This research project was funded by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) in cooperation with the United States Federal Highway Administration. Their support is gratefully acknowledged. The writers are grateful to Project Manager Roger Till, who provided guidance throughout the project. The writers would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Steve Beck, Raja Jildeh, Robert Kelley, Zhizhen Liu, Tony Olson, David Schade, Richard Turcotte, Jon Nekritz, Andy Nowak, Waseem Dekelbab, and Jihang Feng. Without their contributions, this study would not have been successfully completed.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 10 • Issue 5 • September 2005
Pages: 622 - 629
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Apr 23, 2003
Accepted: Aug 16, 2004
Published online: Sep 1, 2005
Published in print: Sep 2005
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