Approach for Establishing Approximate Load Carrying Capacity for Bridges with Unknown Material and Unknown Design Properties
There are 16 small to medium simple span bridges in Larimer County that are currently load rated solely based on visual inspections. Most of these bridges are prestressed concrete bridges. The objective of this project is to load rate these bridges using structural analysis with very little to no information available related to their design. Larimer County provided everything available, which essentially was very limited plans and inspection reports for the bridges. The plans lacked details concerning prestress, cross-section dimensions, and material properties. The bridge (prestress concrete) manufacturer does not have records of the bridges built in the 1960’s or earlier. Due to these limitations, a basic structural analysis was performed using a program developed for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) in 2007 with rating-conservative assumptions in order to determine the capacities of the bridges. The influence of these assumptions on the conclusions is also discussed.
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Corporate Authors:
Colorado State University, Fort Collins
Fort Collins, CO United States 80523 North Dakota State University
Fargo, ND United States 58108 -
Authors:
- Taylor, Zach
- Amini, Omar
- van de Lindt, John W
- Publication Date: 2011-7
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; Photos; Tables;
- Pagination: 86p
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Bearing capacity; Inspection; Load factor; Prestressed concrete bridges; Structural analysis
- Uncontrolled Terms: Medium span bridges; Visual bridge inspection
- Geographic Terms: Colorado
- Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; I24: Design of Bridges and Retaining Walls;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01353830
- Record Type: Publication
- Files: NTL, TRIS
- Created Date: Oct 19 2011 12:52PM