Bridge Rating for Vehicles with Grandfather Provisions
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 26, Issue 9
Abstract
To ensure bridge safety under vehicular traffic, the owners must systematically verify the adequacy of bridge live load-carrying capacity. Bridges are evaluated for design, legal, and permit loading. The legal load rating uses AASHTO legal trucks, which meet the Federal Bridge Formula requirements. However, each state has a federal law exemption for truck weight and size. The state-specific grandfather provisions allow the operation of legally overloaded vehicles. Thus, the objective of this study is to determine whether the current live load factors provide adequate safety for exempted vehicles because there are no provisions for overloaded vehicles under grandfather provisions. This study presents a reliability-based analysis to determine state-specific live load factor for bridge rating on an example of Montana’s 20% overload allowance for agricultural vehicles. This approach does not require a reanalysis of the state bridge inventory. Linear scaling of existing rating results from bridge records can be used to determine ratings for agricultural vehicles. The study provides a calibration method to maintain the required minimum safety level with the minimum cost and effort.
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Acknowledgments
The presented research was partially sponsored by the Montana Department of Transportation, in collaboration with AECOM, represented by Brett Canimore, Jason Zimpfer, and Henry Fix, which is gratefully acknowledged. Also, thanks are due to Great West Engineering Inc. for the identification of vehicles transporting agricultural commodities in Montana and to Dr. Michael Stallings for his input in discussions and valuable comments. Support from Auburn University’s High-Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) is much appreciated. The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied are those of the authors.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 26 • Issue 9 • September 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 18, 2021
Accepted: May 6, 2021
Published online: Jul 8, 2021
Published in print: Sep 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Dec 8, 2021
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Cited by
- Sylwia Stawska, Jacek Chmielewski, Andrzej S. Nowak, Michael Stallings, Bridge life consumption by permit vehicles, Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, 10.1080/15732479.2022.2028859, (1-13), (2022).