Collection

Special Issue on Load Rating and Assessment of Bridges

Submission status
Closed

Infrastructure systems constitute a major part of the national investment of many countries and are critical for the mobility of their societies as well as their economic growth and prosperity. Transportation infrastructure systems, including bridges, are considered assets that should be protected and properly managed. Yet, the degree of rapid deterioration and the risk of exposure to natural and man-made disasters are dangerously high. According to the U.S. National Bridge Inventory’s (NBI) 2011 data, 24% of the 605,086 bridges nationwide need replacement or major repairs. There is a need to develop efficient assessment tools and reliable technologies for the evaluation of numerous long-standing bridges.

Considering these issues, Korea Expressway Corporation, Seoul National University, Inha University, and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey sponsored and organized a public session “Load Rating and Assessment of Bridges” during the 18th IABSE Congress held in Seoul, 2012. The main goal of the public session was to help develop guidelines for the evaluation, assessment, and load rating of bridges by incorporating field testing, structural health monitoring, and probabilistic methods. The public session provided a platform for researchers from leading countries to discuss and compare various methodologies that were adopted by their respective transportation agencies and to enhance future collaboration on this subject. The current state-of-the-art and technological advances in load rating and assessment of highway bridges were presented and discussed. Invited researchers and practitioners presented results from their recent research work and case studies related to the evaluation and assessment of highway bridges. The concept of Load and Resistance Factor Rating (LRFR), currently being implemented in Korea in accordance to the newly adopted Korean design code with Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) format, was highlighted. Tentative guidelines for load rating and assessment of highway bridges were introduced including results from field tests performed on a test-bed of typical bridges. Various projects with applied structural health monitoring (SHM) applications for the evaluation and assessment of bridges were also presented.

The call for papers for this special issue on load rating and assessment of bridges followed this public session. Eleven peer-reviewed papers are published in this special issue. Live load factors for reliability-based bridge evaluation (Hwang et al.), load rating of highway bridges by proof-loading (Casas and Gómez), WIM-based live load for bridges (Nowak and Rakoczy), Reliability-based evaluation of load carrying capacity for a composite box girder bridge (Kim et al.) and Estimation of probabilistic scenario-based design load for extreme events (Park et al.) are five subjects in the field of load rating of bridges. Damage assessment of square RC bridge columns subjected to torsion combined with axial compression, flexure, and shear (Li and Belarbi), damage assessment of flexural strength and serviceability of prestressed SCC bridge I-girders with composite decks (Wehbe and Stripling), verification of shear live-load distribution factor equations for I-girder bridges (Suksawang et al.) and safety assessment of concrete expressway bridges employing probabilistic concept (Paik et al.) are four subjects in the field of assessment of bridges. Numerical model validation for a prestressed concrete girder bridge by using image signals (Kim et al.) and finite element model updating of a simply supported skewed PSC I-girder bridge using hybrid genetic algorithm (Jung and Kim) are two subjects in the field of model updating and verification. It is the hope of the guest editors that the new ideas and novel protocols introduced in this special issue will add to the existing knowledge on the load rating and assessment of bridges

Editors

Articles (11 in this collection)