Moving vehicle loads, impact and fatigue govern design.
Loads include dead, live traffic (HL-93, IRC Class A/70R), impact, braking, centrifugal, wind, thermal, creep/shrinkage, seismic and collision. Influence lines and load models place vehicles to maximise effects. Fatigue assessment uses stress ranges and cycles.
A bridge is checked with a design truck and uniformly distributed lane load.
Traffic and fatigue loads govern many bridges, so their modelling decides the deck and girder design.
Moving vehicle loads, impact and fatigue govern design.
Traffic and fatigue loads govern many bridges, so their modelling decides the deck and girder design.
Dynamic effects from vehicles moving over joints, bumps or irregular surfaces, which increase the effective load.
Repeated traffic loads cause cracks to grow in steel details over decades, so detailing and inspection are needed.
Typical applications include designing a bridge deck for heavy vehicles and impact, checking fatigue in steel details under repeated truck loads and setting the load model for a road bridge using code loading curves.
Study "Bridge engineering" first (topic 66 of 112 in Civil & Structural). It covers the groundwork this topic builds on.
Lane loading. Load distribution factors. Overload permits.
A bridge is checked with a design truck and uniformly distributed lane load.
The next topic is "Bearings and expansion joints", which builds directly on this one.
It is classed as Intermediate in Civil & Structural (topic 67 of 112). It is an intermediate topic. Work through the beginner topics in Civil & Structural first.
Want to practise? Open the interactive course for quick checks, quizzes, simulations and progress tracking.