Predicting Truck Load Spectra under Weight Limit Changes and Its Application to Steel Bridge Fatigue Assessment
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 8, Issue 5
Abstract
Truck weight-limit regulations have significant influence on truck operating weights. These regulations directly influence loads applied to highway facilities, such as bridges and pavements. “Truck weight” herein collectively refers to a vehicle’s gross weight, axle weights, and axle configuration. Truck load spectra as a result of truck weight limits are important to bridge engineering in many respects, such as that of determining requirements for evaluation and design of bridges for both strength and fatigue. This paper’s objective is to present a new method for predicting truck weight spectra resulting from a change in truck weight limits. This method is needed to estimate impacts of the change on highway bridges such as accelerated fatigue accumulation. Historical and recent truck weight data are used to test and illustrate the proposed method, and the results show its good prediction capability. This method is also applied here to an example of estimating the impact on steel bridge fatigue due to a possible increase in the gross-vehicle-weight limit from 356 kN (80 kips) on five axles to 431 kN (97 kips) on six axles. Also included is an investigation of the AASHTO fatigue truck model for steel bridge evaluation. Results show that the current fatigue truck model may become invalid under the studied scenario of truck weight-limit increase.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 8 • Issue 5 • September 2003
Pages: 312 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 16, 2000
Accepted: Apr 30, 2003
Published online: Aug 15, 2003
Published in print: Sep 2003
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