Current specifications of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) include restrictions on the live load deflections of highway bridge girders. Conventional practice, which utilizes hand calculations to estimate girder deflections, assumes that all girders of a highway bridge deflect to the same degree. In addition, the conventional equations do not account for AASHTO specifications requiring the evaluation of extreme force effects. As such, the accuracy of the conventional approach for calculating girder deflections is under question. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to check the accuracy of the conventional approach by testing the two aforementioned assumptions made by the equations. A composite steel girder bridge example has been selected from Design of Highway Bridges: An LRFD Approach, Third Edition by Richard M. Barker and Jay A. Puckett. The design example specifies the dimensions for all structural elements, as well as the girder type and spacing. The design example does not include specifications for the bridge bearings, and so bearing pads are designed according to the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) Bridge Manual (2012). This study consists of two steps. First, a hand-calculated live load deflection for the bridge example is derived from the conventional approach (assuming all girders deflect to the same degree and without consideration for extreme force effects). Next, the finite element analysis software, NISA/Display IV, is utilized to model and analyze the real-world deflections of the bridge model. Three live loading conditions are applied to the finite element model, in accordance with AASHTO specifications. For first live load condition, the live loads are positioned at the center of each traffic lane. The second and third conditions apply extreme force effects to an interior girder and exterior girder, respectively. The results for each finite element analysis are then compared with the conventional, hand-calculated deflection. The results of this study contradict the two aforementioned assumptions made by the conventional equations for calculating girder deflections. Firstly, this study demonstrates that interior girders experience a significantly greater live load deflection than interior girders. More importantly, the results indicate that the conventional equations underestimate the live load deflection of an interior girder subjected to extreme force effects. None of the results, however, suggest that the bridge example is at risk of excessive deformation, and so the extent to which these drawbacks present a concern can be left to the discretion of the engineer.

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Infrastructure management must move from a perspective that may singularly emphasize facility condition assessment to a broader view that involves nonphysical factors, which may substantially impact facility performance and shorten its service life. Socioeconomic, technological, regulatory, and user value changes can substantially increase the service expectations of existing facilities. Based on a theoretical framework drawn from prior work, this research develops a new approach to model infrastructure performance and assess factors that influence the remaining service life of highway bridges. Key parameters that impact the serviceability of highway bridges are identified and incorporated into a system dynamics model. This platform supports parametric scenario analysis and is applied in several cases to test how various factors influence bridge service life and performance. This decision support system provides a new approach for modeling serviceability over time and gives decision-makers an indication of: (a) the gap between society's service expectations and the service level provided and (b) the remaining service life of a highway bridge. / Ph. D.

Recent devastating earthquakes revealed that bridges are one of the most vulnerable components of the transportation systems. These seismic events have emphasized the need to mitigate the risk resulting from the failure of the bridges. Depending on the seismicity of the bridge local site, seismic vulnerability assessment of the bridges can be done based on the fragility curves. These curves are conditional probability functions which give the probability of a bridge attaining or exceeding a particular damage level for an earthquake of a given intensity level. In this dissertation, analytical fragility curves are developed for the ordinary highway bridges in Turkey constructed after the 1990s to be used in the assessment of their seismic vulnerability. Bridges are first grouped into certain major bridge classes based on their structural attributes and sample bridges are generated to account for the structural variability. Nonlinear response history analyses are conducted for each bridge sample with their detailed 3-D analytical models under different earthquake ground motions having varying seismic intensities. Several engineering demand parameters are employed in the determination of seismic response of the bridge components as well as defining damage limit states in terms of member capacities. Fragility curves are obtained from the probability of exceeding each specified damage limit state for each major bridge class. Skew and single-column bent bridges are found to be the most vulnerable ones in comparison with the other bridge classes. Developed fragility curves can be implemented in the seismic risk assessment packages for mitigation purposes.

Subject of this master thesis is a flyover bridge over the road II/434 and flood-land. As a load-bearing construction is designed two-beam structure. Traffic loads on this structure are considered according to standard ČSN EN 1991-2. The structure design is based on resultant stressing according to standard ČSN EN 1992-2.

The exposure from a localized vehicle fire has been observed to produce excessive damage onto highway bridge structural elements including complete collapse of the infrastructure. The occurrence of a fire beneath a bridge can lead to significant economic expense and loss of service even if the bridge does not collapse. The focus of the current research is to assess and evaluate the effect of realistic localized fire exposures from vehicles on the bridge structural integrity and to guide future development of highway bridge design with improved fire resistance. In this research, the bridge structural element response was predicted through a series of three loosely coupled analyses: fire analysis, thermal analysis, and structural analysis. Two different types of fire modeling methodologies were developed in this research and used to predict the thermo-structural response of bridge structural elements: one to model the non-uniform exposure due to a vehicle fire and another to predict response due to a standard uniform furnace exposure. The vehicle fire scenarios required coupling the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) with Abaqus while the furnace exposure scenarios were all done within Abaqus. Both methodologies were benchmarked against experimental data. Using the developed methodologies, simulations were initially performed to predict the thermo-structural response of a single steel girder-concrete deck composite assembly to different local, non-uniform fires and uniform standard furnace fire exposures. The steel girder-concrete deck composite assembly was selected since it is a common bridge design. Following this, a series of simulations were performed on unprotected highway bridges with multiple steel plate girders and steel tub girders subjected to localized fires. The analyses were used to evaluate the influence of a fire scenario on the bridge element response, identify the factors governing the failure of bridge structural elements subjected to a localized fire exposure, and provide guidance in the design of highway bridge structural elements against fire hazards. This study demonstrates that girder geometry affected both the dynamics of the fire as well as the heat transfer to the bridge structural elements which resulted in a different structural response for the bridge. A heavy goods vehicle (heat release rate of 200 MW) and tanker fires (heat release rate of 300 MW) were predicted to cause the bridge to fail due to collapse, while smaller fires did not. The geometric features of the plate girders caused the girder elements to be exposed to higher heat fluxes from both sides of the girder resulting in collapse when exposed to a HGV fire. Conversely, the closed feature of the box girder does not allow the interior surfaces to be in direct contact with the flames and are only exposed to the internal reradiation from surfaces inside the girder. As a result, the single and double lane tub girder highway bridge structure does not fail due to a heavy goods vehicle fire exposure. / Ph. D.

O problema da interação dinâmica entre ponte rodoviária e veículo pesado tem sido, há pouco mais de uma década, tema de muitos estudos. O objetivo é considerar as ações dinâmicas de forma mais realista e definir novos critérios de projeto. Este trabalho contribui com um estudo teórico, por elementos finitos, sobre as respostas dinâmicas de pontes considerando a interação com as respostas do veículo. A interação entre ambos é tratada por meio do acoplamento das suas matrizes, e as respostas no tempo do sistema ponte/veículo acoplado são calculadas pelo método de Newmark. A estrutura é representada por elementos de placa de 9 nós e o veículo por modelo tridimensional com 7 e 11 graus de liberdade para veículos com 2 e 3 eixos, respectivamente. Os modelos são elaborados com dimensões e características de estruturas reais. A travessia do veículo é representada pela mudança de posição dos pneus de nó em nó do modelo da estrutura. Para cada posição do veículo são obtidas as matrizes de massa, amortecimento e rigidez do sistema acoplado, desde a entrada do 1° eixo até a saída do último. As respostas são calculadas para diversas condições de operação simuladas pela combinação de diferentes peso e velocidade do veículo com diferentes rugosidades da pista. Os resultados numéricos se mostraram coerentes com os resultados de análises dinâmicas realizadas experimentalmente, obtidos na literatura, e possibilitaram visualizar alguns dos problemas observados em pontes reais. / Since the past decade, the problem of interaction between vehicle and structure responses has been object of many studies. The objectives are to consider the dynamic loads in a more realistic way and to define new design criteria aiming safety and economy. In this thesis, a theoretical investigation on the dynamic response of highway bridge submitted to heavy vehicle, using the finite elements method, is presented. This analysis considers the interaction between vehicle response and structure response through the coupling matrices of both. The detailed models are idealized with magnitude and characteristics of real structures. The bridge is idealized with plate elements of 9 nodes, and the vehicle, with a three-dimensional model. The traffic is considered by changing tires\' position node by node on bridge model, hence the mass, stiffness and damping matrices are updated in agreement with the position of the vehicle. It allows the evaluation of the behavior of the structure from the first axle entrance to last axle exit. The applied forces to the structure are related, besides to the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle, to its speed and the surface irregularities. The time-dependent responses are calculated by Newmark\'s method. The numeric results have allowed the visualization some of the observed problems in real bridges.

O problema da interação dinâmica entre ponte rodoviária e veículo pesado tem sido, há pouco mais de uma década, tema de muitos estudos. O objetivo é considerar as ações dinâmicas de forma mais realista e definir novos critérios de projeto. Este trabalho contribui com um estudo teórico, por elementos finitos, sobre as respostas dinâmicas de pontes considerando a interação com as respostas do veículo. A interação entre ambos é tratada por meio do acoplamento das suas matrizes, e as respostas no tempo do sistema ponte/veículo acoplado são calculadas pelo método de Newmark. A estrutura é representada por elementos de placa de 9 nós e o veículo por modelo tridimensional com 7 e 11 graus de liberdade para veículos com 2 e 3 eixos, respectivamente. Os modelos são elaborados com dimensões e características de estruturas reais. A travessia do veículo é representada pela mudança de posição dos pneus de nó em nó do modelo da estrutura. Para cada posição do veículo são obtidas as matrizes de massa, amortecimento e rigidez do sistema acoplado, desde a entrada do 1° eixo até a saída do último. As respostas são calculadas para diversas condições de operação simuladas pela combinação de diferentes peso e velocidade do veículo com diferentes rugosidades da pista. Os resultados numéricos se mostraram coerentes com os resultados de análises dinâmicas realizadas experimentalmente, obtidos na literatura, e possibilitaram visualizar alguns dos problemas observados em pontes reais. / Since the past decade, the problem of interaction between vehicle and structure responses has been object of many studies. The objectives are to consider the dynamic loads in a more realistic way and to define new design criteria aiming safety and economy. In this thesis, a theoretical investigation on the dynamic response of highway bridge submitted to heavy vehicle, using the finite elements method, is presented. This analysis considers the interaction between vehicle response and structure response through the coupling matrices of both. The detailed models are idealized with magnitude and characteristics of real structures. The bridge is idealized with plate elements of 9 nodes, and the vehicle, with a three-dimensional model. The traffic is considered by changing tires\' position node by node on bridge model, hence the mass, stiffness and damping matrices are updated in agreement with the position of the vehicle. It allows the evaluation of the behavior of the structure from the first axle entrance to last axle exit. The applied forces to the structure are related, besides to the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle, to its speed and the surface irregularities. The time-dependent responses are calculated by Newmark\'s method. The numeric results have allowed the visualization some of the observed problems in real bridges.

Seismic design of highway bridges has improved as a result of the experience gained from large earthquakes of the last thirty years. Ductility demand and reserved capacity are extremely important response measures used in new bridge designs to assess target damage levels. However, the application of practical design approaches specified in bridge design codes is not well-defined for bridges over flexible foundations. Within the scope of this research, thirty two bridge models having varying column aspect ratio, amount of column longitudinal reinforcement and foundation flexibility parameters are investigated through a series of analyses such as response spectrum analysis and inelastic time-history analysis under &ldquo / safety evaluation earthquake&rdquo / hazard level with a return period of 1000 years, and push-over analysis. Using the results of analyses, seismic response of the investigated bridges are identified with several measures such as displacement capacity over demand ratio, global displacement ductility demand, and response modification factor, along with maximum concrete and steel strains of columns. A correlation between concrete and steel strains and seismic response measure values is constructed to estimate damage levels with commonly used response measures. The findings of this research revealed that global displacement ductility demand is not a favorable response measure for assessing damage levels. On the other hand, displacement capacity over demand ratios can be suggested for estimation of damage levels especially where foundation flexibility effects are extensive as system yielding is not taken into consideration.

My thesis is focused on a design and comparism of the highway bridge across Dolansky creek. The bridge is built by balanced cantilever method. The common span length is 110metres. The bridge is post-tensioned concrete structure.The static model is made of beams.The static analysis during lifespan of bridge is made by Time discretization analysis . The design of reinforcement is made for longitudinal section and cross section.