Comportamento Estrutural de Pontes Logísticas do

tipo Mabey do Exército Português

Structural Behaviour of Logistic Bridges of the Mabey type in Portuguese Army

Ricardo Miguel Rodrigues Pereira

IST, Technical University of Lisbon

“Extended Abstract”

October 2015
Structural Behaviour of Logistic Bridges of the Mabey type in Portuguese Army

Ricardo Miguel Rodrigues Pereira

ricardompereira@ist.utl.pt

IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract
In this dissertation an analysis is performed to the logistic and modular bridge of the Mabey type,
used by the Portuguese Army to give logistic support whether to the population or to the militaries
themselves. This study consists in an analysis of the structural behaviour both in the rupture and
in service.

Hence, a numerical model based in the finite elements’ method was used, in which actions defi-
nition, specifically the military one, was needed. In order to calibrate this model, “in situ” measures
were performed from a load test and the respective validation involved a benchmark with manu-
facturer’s catalogue. Furthermore, statutory verifications of the structural behaviour were applied,
in which the main concerns in this type of structure were addressed.

Since the military action is not already regulated, it was crucial to implement a dynamic study
focusing on the vehicle-structure interaction as a way to understand the impact of this action in
the bridge behaviour, meanly in what concerns with its deformations, accelerations and the major
structural elements’ forces.

From this analysis, it was possible to confirm safety verifications; however the most stressed
elements present an active/resistant force factor close to the maximum allowed limit. This concern
may be explained by the structure main goal. In what concerns to the dynamic effects, it is core
to notice that these depend on the type of structure and the action itself. Thus, whenever one of
these is singular, there is the need to perform another study just like the one presented here.

Keywords: Modular bridge, Mabey bridge, Portuguese Army, Structural behaviour, Dynamic study

1 Introduction

The concept of modular bridges applied to steel pre-manufactured panels was born with A. M.
Hamilton in 1935, with the Callendar - Hamilton Bridge. During the World War II there was a major
advance in this type of bridges, with the military engineer Donald Bailey developing the Bailey
bridge. Until today this bridge has undergone several changes by some companies, and the one
the Portuguese Army purchased is the Mabey Bridge, corresponding to one of the most current
logistics bridges. To support military operations, the Portuguese Army uses other bridges such
as the Ribon, the Treadway, the Bailey and the TMTB Bridge.

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The Mabey bridge type (Figure 1) is used by the Portuguese Army for the support of military
operations and, when available, of civilian population. Its operation has been sustained by the
producer’s "technical manual" which, in a simple way, defines the possible conditions to the struc-
ture use and provides expressions to evaluate the operation conditions. However, there has been
situations in which its uses were not directly included in this manual. In these cases, it would be
interesting to perform a study of the structural behaviour to assess with bigger detail the appro-
priate conditions of use, and identify the actual capacity of this type of structures.

Figure 1 - Mabey Bridge in Mira

This study aims to assess the structural behaviour of a truss bridge, in particular a Mabey bridge
type, both in extreme conditions that lead to rupture, as well as in normal service conditions. To
achieve this goal it was considered necessary to develop a numerical model to simulate the struc-
ture’s behaviour, and to allow a comparison with the design elements provided in the producer's
catalogue. This last aspect aims to overcome some challenges in this catalogue interpretation.

2 Actions and Model Definition

To perform the evaluation regarding the safety conditions of this Logistics Bridge with a road use,
it became necessary to define the actions and the analysis model. Since the bridge can have
several configurations and spans, it was also core to define the configuration of study.

It was assumed in this study an equivalent situation to the logistics bridge type Mabey mounted
by the Portuguese Army in Odemira in 2011, with the configuration TSHR3H (Figure 1). This
configuration corresponds to the highest possible reinforcement of a 57.91 m span which corre-
sponds to the producer established limit, which refers a maximum military vehicle weight of 60 t
(Mabey Bridge Limited, 2014). In addition, load tests records of its assembly were useful for the
validation and calibration of the numerical model here developed.

The determinant actions for the service assessment and the ultimate capacity of this type of struc-
ture correspond to both permanent and variable actions of live loads from whether civil or military
use. The variable actions transmitted by the vehicles to the bridge are considered as rolling ver-
tical loads, therefore it must be considered as dynamic character, since the passage of a vehicle
by the bridge at a given speed introduces a certain amplification of the same loads effects when
applied statically. These effects can be evaluated using the definition of a dynamic amplification’s
coefficient, as seen in Chapter 4, only for the military live loads, since the civil road live loads
defined in EC1-Part 2 (CEN, 2003) already covers the dynamic effects (Costa, 2002).

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Regarding the permanent loads, it is usually divided in two parts: the self-weight and the remain-
ing permanent loads. In the specific case of this type of bridges, to ensure a fast assembly, all the
elements of the structure has structural function, hence they are considered self-weight.

SELF-WEIGHT – The self-weight quantification considers each material characteristic. For the
TSHR3H configuration, the self-weight portion has a 17.97 kN/m weight. The analysis model re-
turned a 17.32 kN/m weight which presents a 4% difference.

ROAD LIVE LOAD – Among all the variable actions only the road live load will be taken into
consideration in this work, since they represent the most important design constraints. This action
is defined in EN1-Part 2 as Load Model 1 (CEN, 2003), and when applied to this structure it
corresponds to a four point loads – TS – (150 kN each) (Figure 2), and to a uniformly distributed
load – UDL – (9.0 kN/m2 in lane 1 and 2.5 kN/m2 in the remaining area) (Figure 3).

Figure 2 - TS characterization (CEN, Figure 3 - UDL characterization, adapted from Mabey Bridge
2003) Limited (2014)

ACTION SAFETY COEFFICIENT – All the structural elements are pre-fabricated, so they can
easily been change wherever they are damaged, thus accordingly to EN 1990 – Table 2.1 (CEN,
2001), this is a class 2 structure in “life cycle duration” terms. The Annex B of this norm presents
the factors taking in to consideration in order to assure the regular liability level versus the time
and the consequence class (CC). Because this is an emergency structure and its life duration is
relatively short, this bridge can be classified as CC1. In this terms, the EN 1990 presents a 0.9
coefficient to apply to every partial coefficient of unfavourable actions.

An alternative to the live load road regulations, it was

also deemed the specific military actions computed from
existing vehicles in Portuguese Army. Thus, the military
action characteristic value was obtained from the heavi-
est tactic vehicle in the Portuguese Army fleet: The tank
Leopard 2A6. Its maximum weight is 595.4 kN, so the
military action characteristic value was considered to be
600 kN, and distributed as in Figure 4, according to the Figure 4 - Definition of military live load
[kN]
tank dimensions (Ordnance, 2001).

The numerical model (Figure 5) was developed using the automatic calculation software
SAP2000 considering beam finite elements. The geometry defined in the model relates to the
TSHR3H configuration as the reference structure.

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 Figure 5 - 3D view of the structure numerical model

In order to obtain a more accurate model validation, the geometric sections of that reference
bridge were measure and then compared with beams section from the same country as the
bridge’s producer. In addition a load test to that logistic bridge was preformed and those data
compared. This comparison showed closed similarities between all the sources.

By studding the structure, and more specifically its elements connected by bolts and clips, some
gaps were found that could influence the results. The situation was overcome by taking into ac-
count the influence these connections represents to the structure deformation.

The Table 1 shows the values for the displacements measured in the middle span section, where
δ is the displacement recorded due to the self-weight action and the live load test of 40 t, FEM is
the Finite Element Method and s is the live load.

Table 1 - Vertical displacements measured in the middle span section

Action δmeasured [mm] δtable [mm] δFEM

w = ??? w ≈ 17.98 kN/m w ≈ 17.32 kN/m
Self-weight (w)
110 68 + 100 = 168 70 + 98 = 168
Live load – 40 t (s) 40 42 45

From Table 1 it is possible to understand that the model presents approved results, since they are
similar to the ones obtained through the load test and the tables. The second value added in the
second and third columns represents the displacement due to refereed connections.

From the "in-situ" measures, the displacement due to the self-weight action is 110 mm, what could
mean that the real displacement is shorter than the specified in the catalogue. However, those
gaps are shortened during the assembly, so its influence is not so significant. This also explains
why a model with rigid joints has a good calculation of the test vehicle displacement, since all the
gaps were already eliminated by the self-weight. Those results support the fact that this deform-
ability does not change with the efforts distribution and it is null for the live loads action. Thus, in
the models used in Chapter 3 and 4 it was considered rigid joints.

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3 Structural Behaviour Evaluation

The safety verifications were performed considering Ultimate Limits States (ULS) actions combi-
nations as well as Utilization Limits States (SLS), in accordance with the Eurocode 0 (EC0) (CEN,
2001), that in the case under study, led to the following efforts combinations:

1.35 × (0.9 × 𝑐𝑝) + 1.35 × (0.9 × 𝑈𝐷𝐿 + 0.9 × 𝑇𝑆)

𝑐𝑝 + 0.4 × 𝑈𝐷𝐿 + 0.75 × 𝑇𝑆

1.35 × (𝑐𝑝) + 1.35 × (𝑆𝑂𝐵𝑀𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑟 )

It was confirmed that the regulatory actions are very restrictive in the safety verification, overcom-
ing the resistance of the most requested elements (diagonal) in 60 %. Thus, the safety for ULS
was evaluated, without considering the action of the vehicle type (TS) and assuming that there is
only the 9.0 kN/m2 lane, which corresponds to critical situation of heavy vehicles, representing
the model UDL, by changing the combination of efforts of ULS to 1.35×(0.9×cp)+1.35×(0.9×UDL).

However, considering reduced live loads it is also not ensured the security verifications of the
most requested elements (exceeds by 29% the diagonals). On the other side, it was evaluated
the maximum possible live load, which resulted in a 0.98 effort factor active/resistant on the most
requested diagonal. The ultimate safety was verified for 65% of the regulatory uniform live load.
In fact, taking into account the military action and their ULS action combination, a factor of 0.73
for both the top chord and the diagonal and 0.40 for the beam was obtained. As so, the ultimate
safety was verified with a larger margin. It was demonstrated that, as established by the "user
manual", a span of 57.91 m with TSHR3H configuration verifies the safety for the 60 t military
vehicle.

The deformability was also evaluated for a frequent combination of actions, according to the EC3
(CEN, 2005). However, the European standards, and in particular the EC0 (CEN, 2001), do not
define clearly what is the maximum deflection, so, as a reference, it has been considered the
Swiss regulation SIA criteria (SIA Zurich, 1989), which refers to the maximum deflection as being
L/500.

Thus, for a span of 57.91 m, the maximum displacement is 116 mm. For the frequent combination
of actions, the structure has a maximum displacement of 165.5 mm for the civil live load, 43%
higher than the maximum. It is worth to remember the contribution of the deformability from the
pins gaps, which is approximately 100 mm. With the military live load, the maximum displacement
is reduced to 148.9 mm, which is still 29% higher than the established regulations.

However, these verifications are satisfied considering that a 168 mm of counter-deflection is

added in the assembly to compensate the deformability both from permanent loads and from the
pins gaps. In this case the limit L/500=116 mm compares directly only with the deformability of
live loads frequent value (98.9mm) and for the 60 t military vehicle (79.8 mm).

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It is worth to highlight that the structure can only be transportable and quickly assembled if divided
in relatively small and lightweight modules. As a consequence, this increases the number of de-
formable joins, which raises the structure deformability. In this case 19 modules were used, so
the portion of the joins deformability doubles the elastic deflection due to the structure loading.

Even in the evaluation of the structural behaviour, the structure sensitivity regarding differential
settlement was evaluated. This aspect may be relevant in the redistribution of internal efforts both
in structure and in the increase of deformability (Meireles, 2010). It is natural for settlements on
the supports to happen in these modular bridges. In fact, the need to achieve a rapid assembly
and its relatively low weight, constrains the use of deep support foundations. Thus, the respective
abutment often consists of simple reinforced concrete blocks directly on top of the ground, which
necessarily needs to be quickly compressed, due to the emergency nature of this bridge, what
could mean suffer settlements over time.

In this context, and with the aim of evaluating the effects of this last action (differential settlement),
a 10 cm settlement was considered in just one of the truss bearings. Adding the 10 cm settlement
to the uniform live loads action and admitting only their frequent value, an active/resistance factor
of 0.95 in diagonal, 0.54 in compressed chord, and 0.14 in beam was obtained. For the same
settlement but a different actions combination, including the military one in service, that same
factor became 0.65 to diagonal, 0.68 to compressed chord, and 0.33 to beam, and therefore the
security was verified.

4 Vehicle – Structure Interaction Study

The dynamic effects in highway and railway bridges have been the object of several studies, and
given the importance these effects have on the bridges’ structural behaviour, K. Chompooming
(1995) showed that the characteristics of numerous impact, especially the speed of the vehicle,
may result in high dynamic effects. These, in a simply supported bridge, has a particular relevance
to short spans, meaning that in bridges with spans over 20 m, the dynamic increments of static
efforts generated by a certain live load are of less importance. Regardless of this, the problem of
dynamic amplification is more relevant in regular traffic, being impossible to assess a value for
each type of traffic. This impossibility is also verified when studding a specific traffic situation, where
the dynamic effects are different for the bending moment and for the shear force. In fact, to truss
bridges, the dynamics amplification can be more relevant to the shear force (A. González, 2011).

Studies show that the maximum dynamic effect may not correspond to the structure element in
which occurs the maximum static effect. From Figure 6 the dynamic amplification of the loads can
be estimated. The dynamic coefficient φ, which represents the dynamic amplification of the re-
spective effort, is given from this figure in the vertical axis, as a function of the length of the loaded
span (J. Calgaro, 2010).

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Figure 6 - Dynamic coefficient for simply support bridges due to traffic load with: (a) 1 lane, (b) 2 to 4 lanes,
(c) local effects, (J. Calgaro, 2010)

Since the regulatory road live loads already include the contribution of dynamic effects, there are
no specific statutory criteria to highway bridges. Therefore, the verifications in this work were
guided by railway bridges rules, namely, EN 1991-2 section 6.4 (CEN, 2003). A dynamic analysis
in time can be performed to assess the dynamic effects, which depends on several factors repre-
sented in a form of a flowchart (section 6.4.4 of EN 1991-2 (CEN, 2003)). The considered action
is the military vehicle already defined.

The dynamic analysis results must be confronted with the static analysis multiplied by the dynamic
amplification coefficient. The worst-case scenario should be chosen for the security verifications.
This verification should ensure that the efforts range in the dynamic regime is covered by the
amplitude of the static analysis.

Both the deflections and accelerations are more critical where the load is directly applied, more
specifically on the level of the circulation platform. Thus, it is presented in Table 2 the dynamic
deflections as a function of speed of movement, in the inferior chord in the middle span.
Table 2 - Dynamic deflections for varios velocities on military model

Velocity [m/s] static 5 10 15 18.8 20 25 30

Deflections [mm] 148.9 149.0 148.7 150.2 150.7 152.1 148.0 155.9
Table 2 allows to conclude that the higher the speed, the bigger the deflection, which represents
an increase of 5% for the dynamic displacement towards the static one, this is caused when the
speed is 30 m/s. The increment of static displacement is therefore not significant, even for high
speeds.

Regarding to vertical accelerations, Figure 7 presents the results for the section with the greatest
acceleration in the inferior chord of the interior truss, approximately in the middle span, consider-
ing the military vehicle (Figure 4) circulation at the speed of 10 m/s.

Figure 7 - Acceleration in analysis time for a 10 m/s speed

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In Figure 7 the maximum value is coloured in red. That figure shows the displacement accelera-
tion (vertical axis) in time, when a 60 t military vehicle travels at 10 m/s in the bridge. The maxi-
mum acceleration considering seven different speeds are resumed in Table 3:
Table 3 - Vertical dynamical acelerations due to varius velocities of the militar vehicle

Velocity [m/s] 5 10 15 18.8 20 25 30

|Maximum acceleration| [m/s2] 0.82 1.83 6.13 5.30 3.43 7.51 19.05
Time [s] 14.2 8.31 4.02 5.25 1.83 2.07 4.83

Table 3 shows that in general, the higher the speeds, the greater the accelerations in the bridge.
EN 1990-A2 defines a maximum acceleration of 5 m/s2 for non-ballasted railways, admitting the
possibility to extrapolate that for the current scenario, it is clear that speeds above 10 m/s exceed
that limit, except for 20 m/s speeds. Since this is a comfort verification of the movement in service,
the speed must be limited at 10 m/s (36 to 40 km/h).

The EN 1991-2 demands that a dynamic analysis should be performed. So, the dynamic amplifi-
cation is given by the equation: φ′𝑑𝑦𝑛 = 𝑚á𝑥|𝑦𝑑𝑦𝑛 ⁄𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡 | − 1.

The results show that the efforts’ dynamic amplification coefficient was higher in the diagonals
next of the bearings (2.2 corresponding to a 0.98 factor of the dynamic military action combina-
tion), as a result of shear force equivalent to the truss. This is consistent with the study of Gonza-
lez et al (2011), which refers that the effect of dynamic action may be more significant in the shear
force, in particular in truss bridges. This present study proves that, the dynamic action do not
produce significant changes in compressed forces of chords and nor in bending moments of
beams, but it do have impact in compressed forces of diagonals next to the bearings (effect of
transverse effort overall).

On the other hand, the 1.2 dynamic coefficient for share force proposed by J. Calgaro (2010) in
Figure 6 is obtained for spans greater than 25 m, which does not match the results obtained in
this work. It seems that the particular characteristics from the truss here studied may be quite
different from the structure used to obtain the results in Figure 6, which justifies the study of
dynamic interaction track-structure.

Finally, even considering the increments in efforts due to the dynamic effects, the structural safety
is verified for the military action in this specific configuration of the Mabey bridge type.

5 Conclusions and Future Developments

From this study is important to highlight the following conclusions which have sought to respond
to the originally establish objectives:

 The TSHR3H configuration studied ensures the ultimate safety for a combination involv-
ing the permanent load and 50% of the regulatory live load of the type LM1; On the other
hand, the bridge use under the conditions defined in the producer's catalogue, resulted
in the verification of the ultimate safety for both the civil and the military vehicle;

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  The safety verifications were, in general, controlled by diagonal elements near the bear-
ings (due to shear forces) and by compressed chords (due to bending moment), situation
in which the efforts differ little in the set of three trusses on the same cross-section. The
efforts slightly change inside the trusses set, which was expected as result of a good
efforts distribution between the various plans of truss systems by the system bracing;
 The structure vertical deformation is highly dependent of the connections deformability
between the bridge’s modules, which for the studied configuration increases about 100%
the deflection obtained for the permanent loads. When considering the connection gap
eliminated and the live load action, the model retrieves elastic deflections close to those
recorded in the load test and estimated from the producer's catalogue;
 It was evaluated the influence of a settlement in one end of a plan of trusses. This anal-
yses showed that, for a differential settlement up to 10 cm, the ultimate safety continues
to be guaranteed and registered efforts redistributions in the trusses elements are re-
duced;
 For the dynamic effects produced by the studied military vehicle in that specific bridge
configuration, the ULS security continues to be ensured. The higher dynamic effects were
registered in the efforts of the diagonals next of the bearings;
 To improve the SLS comfort conditions, a limitation of the maximum vertical accelerations
was stabilised which corresponded to a maximum permissible speed of approximately
40 km/h.

Whenever a study of this type is performed, there are several aspects that were not taken into
consideration due to the time constrains. Hence, future works may go further in some of the fol-
lowing aspects:

 An analysis of the specific effect of torsion caused by an accidental action of a civil or

military vehicle when circulating in another position not centred with the cross section;
 An analysis of the structural safety in the assembly phase, when the bridge is launched
on cantilever and an additional safety evaluation is needed for this temporary phase;
 Although this is a temporary structure, there is the possibility of successive uses, which
incises the elements fatigue and for this analyses both a civil and/or a military live loads
should be considered;
 An analysis of the horizontal actions impact such as vehicles acceleration and braking in
the structure. In particular the generated efforts and the way they are transmitted to the
fixed abutment must be taken into account;
 An analysis of the possible accident actions, such as shock of a vehicle with the trusses’
plan, and its implications action for structure ultimate safety;
 A study of the ultimate load capacity, as the dynamic interaction, for different configura-
tions of this type of bridge, as well as for different spans, in order to generalise this con-
clusions.

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