Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Importance of the tail in truck weight modeling for bridge assessment
    (American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE), 2010-03) ; ;
    To predict characteristic extreme traffic load effects, simulations are sometimes performed of bridge loading events. To generalize the truck weight data, statistical distributions are fitted to histograms of weight measurements. This paper is based on extensive weigh-in-motion measurements from two European sites and shows the sensitivity of the characteristic traffic load effects to the fitting process. A semiparametric fitting procedure is proposed: direct use of the measured histogram where there are sufficient data for this to be reliable and parametric fitting to a statistical distribution in the tail region where there are less data. Calculated characteristic load effects are shown to be highly sensitive to the fit in the tail region of the histogram.
    Scopus© Citations 59  909
  • Publication
    Simplifed site-Specific traffic load models for bridge assessment
    (Taylor & Francis, 2007-12) ;
    Traffic load is identified as one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in the assessment of bridges. In recent years, simulation techniques, using measured traffic data, have been used to predict the characteristic traffic load effects on bridges. However, the techniques are complex, sensitive to the assumptions adopted and require specialist statistical expertise. This work presents a simplified site-specific traffic load model that generates comparable load effects to the corresponding results from a full simulation. While the simplified model is still sensitive to the underlying assumptions, these can be carefully reviewed prior to the method being approved. Further, the simplified method can be employed by practicing engineers for bridge assessment.
    Scopus© Citations 64  1637