Probabilistic assessment of an aged highway bridge under traffic load
conference paper
Existing civil infrastructure represents a large economic value. Within the actions applied to the bridges, the traffic load is, in general, the most significant variable action to be considered when the ultimate limit states are under investigation. Consequently, the traffic load models play an important role in the design of new bridges but also in the reliability assessment of existing structures. This article evaluates the safety of an existing highway bridge in the Netherlands. In order to determine whether the structure can be safely used up to the moment of renovation, a probabilistic assessment of the bridge was performed. Important part of that study was a measurement program in order to determine the distribution of the stresses in the main load bearing structure due to the traffic load. From these measurements the design stresses were extrapolated using a technique for fitting an extreme value distribution to the measured data. Design stresses should be derived such that they provide a sufficient safety level of the bridge. After the semi-probabilistic analysis for all the bridge elements, for one bolted connection in the bottom flange of a main girder, a probabilistic calculation is performed in order to establish the safety level, avoiding all schematizations and possible conservatisms in the calculation rules. © 2012 Taylor & Francis Group.
Topics
Bolted connectionsBridge elementsCivil infrastructuresDesign stressEconomic valuesExisting structureExtreme value distributionsLoadbearing structureMeasured dataMeasurement programsNetherlandsProbabilistic assessmentsReliability assessmentsSafety levelTraffic load modelTraffic loadsUltimate limit stateDesignHighway bridgesRatingReliability analysisRisk managementBridges
TNO Identifier
446761
ISBN
9780415683791
Source title
European Safety and Reliability Conference: Advances in Safety, Reliability and Risk Management, ESREL 2011, 18 September 2011 through 22 September 2011, Troyes
Pages
1906-1910
Files
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