Tyre contact surface for the fatigue design of orthotropic steel bridge decks

The fatigue life of orthotropic steel bridge decks in road bridges depends on the load effects exerted by heavy lorries. The contact surface of tyres is one of the important variables. Measurements described in the literature demonstrate that the actual tyre contact surfaces of today's traffic representative for Europe are shorter and slightly...

Traffic load model for road bridges in the urban road network

Traffic load models like in the Eurocode and other design standards are mostly calibrated using traffic load measurements at heavily loaded highway locations. Therefore application of these models to existing bridges in the urban road network often leads to unnecessary strengthening. Direct measurement data for this road network are currently...

Structural reliability of existing city bridges

Full probabilistic reliability analysis may be valuable for assessing existing structures. Measures for increasing the safety level are quite costly for existing structures and may be unnecessary when such a decision is grounded on a conservative analysis for determining the structural reliability. This may be avoided by applying a more detailed...

Probabilistic traffic load model for short-span city bridges

In the coming years numerous existing traffic bridges in cities are subject to re-evaluation. In this paper a new probabilistic traffic load model for short-span bridges is proposed. As an example, site-specific weigh-in-motion data from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is included in the model. The method proposed in this paper allows for a very...

Probabilistic assessment of an aged highway bridge under traffic load

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...

Hybrid bayesian networks for traffic load models from weigh-in-motion data

The Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) systems are used, among other applications, in pavement and bridge engineering, in infrastructure monitoring and assessment and inspection and reinforcement strategies. In the Netherlands and some other countries, the video-WIM system was implemented for pre-selection, and for continuously monitoring overloads. The...

Traffic load model based on weigh in motion measurements

The assessment of the structural safety of existing bridges and viaducts becomes increasingly important in many countries. 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. Over the last years a considerable...

Safety assessment of existing concrete slab bridges for shear capacity

Evaluating and upgrading concrete slab bridges is an important issue. A large part of the existing infrastructure has been built about 50 years ago and the design life has been reached or will be reached in the near future. Also traffic loads have increased significantly over the last 50 years. These structures need to be reassessed in order to...

Potential of energy-oriented network optimisation: Switching off over-capacity in off-peak hours

Mobile communication networks are usually planned to provide some minimum service quality level during peak traffic hours. Consequently, in off-peak hours, when traffic loads are lower, the network is characterised by over-capacity, in the sense that same service quality targets can typically be satisfied with a reduced set of network resources,...

Safety philosophy for existing structures and partial factors for traffic loads on bridges

Evaluating and upgrading existing structures becomes more and more important. For a large part of the existing infrastructure and buildings the design life has been reached or will be reached in the near future. These structures need to be reassessed in order to find out whether the safety requirements are met. Not only for new structures but...

Assessment of access selection and transmit diversity in (non) cosited multi-access networks

Multi-access networks integrate a number of radio accesses (RAS) over which a data flow may be transmitted. Considering the possibility of multi-radio transmit diversity (MRTD), where a given flow may be assigned multiple RAS either in parallel or in a switched mode, we investigate mechanisms for joint RA selection and scheduling of data flows...