Citation

Fiorillo G, Ghosn M. Struct. Infrastruct. Eng. 2018; 14(5): 619-633.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15732479.2017.1380675

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the U.S. overloading represents the third cause of bridge failures just after hydraulic events and collisions. Large data assembled by Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) systems can be used to obtain improved region-specific or network-specific characterization of vehicle loads on highway bridges for a more accurate evaluation of the safety of critical bridges and the failure consequences to the concerned communities. To achieve this goal it is important to develop tools that allow engineers to estimate the reliability of various types of bridges subjected to realistic ranges of heavy truck load intensities as encountered on highway networks. The objective of this paper is to describe an approach that combines field data and numerical simulations to perform the fragility analysis of bridges due to different percentages of overweight loads and truck traffic. Numerical examples are provided by analyzing typical bridges using field truck data collected at WIM sites in upstate New York. The results of the analysis show that the fragility curves for fatigue are function of the percentage of overweight trucks in New York as a second order polynomial, while the fragility curves of bridges for overstress can be modeled with a copula using both normal distributions for the overweight percentages and Average Daily Truck Traffic.

Language: en

Keywords

bridge reliability; fragility curves; Monte Carlo simulation; overweight trucks; Weigh in motion