Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems 35 (2018) 4027–4035 4027

DOI:10.3233/JIFS-169725
IOS Press

Stability safety assessment of long-span

continuous girder bridges in cantilever
construction
Feng Hua,b , Pingming Huanga , Fenghui Dongc,∗ and A. Blanchetd
a Highway College, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China
b Henan Transportation Research Institute Co., Ltd, Zhengzhou, China
c Department of Bridge Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
d Department of Statistical, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Abstract. The overturning stability issue of continuous girder bridges is critical so that it is necessary to obtain the true
overturning stability performance. At present, the parameters uncertainties in the structure were neglected in the stability
evaluation method of the long-span continuous girder bridges, which leads to the unknown safety level of the continuous
girder bridges during the cantilever construction. Therefore, a calculating method for overturning stability safety factors of
long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction based on inverse reliability theory is presented in this paper.
The proposed method is extended from the traditional deterministic form of safety factor, which considered influence of
uncertainty factors among structure parameters was used to obtain safety factors through target reliability index based on
inverse reliability theory. Overturning stability safety factor of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction
and parameter sensitivity were assessed using the proposed method, as well as the reasonableness of longitudinal overturning
stability safety factors was discussed. The results show that parameter uncertainties have a major effect on overturning stability
safety factors of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction, ignoring parameter uncertainties will result
in overestimation of overturning stability safety factors of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction,
reasonable safety factor should be obtained based on target performance. The sum of the self-weight of the travelling form
and the pouring segment has the most significant effect on the safety factor. It’s critical to ensure a reasonable situation of
the travelling form during the construction stage in case of falling. The resistant moment of the temporary support and the
eccentric distance of the support also need to be handled carefully because of the remarkable effect. The proposed method
is stable and reliable, which will be convergent to the same result from different initial value in spite of different iteration
progress.

Keywords: Bridge engineering, overturning stability safety factor, inverse reliability theory, cantilever construction, long-span
continuous girder bridges, uncertainty, target reliability index

1. Introduction of the cantilever length during the cantilever con-

The overturning risk of bridge structure caused by
the unbalanced load increases along with increasing
∗ Corresponding author. Fenghui Dong, Department of Bridge
Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China. E-mail:
tongjidfh@163.com.
struction stage of long-span pre-stressed concrete
continuous girder bridge. To ensure the structural
safety, a temporary reinforcement measure is usu-
ally located at the pier, which is implemented by
arranging several rows rebar symmetrically on both
sides of the support to anchor the 0# block on the
pier in order to resist the overturning moment from

1064-1246/18/$35.00 © 2018 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
4028 F. Hu et al. / Stability safety assessment of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction
Fig. 1. Bridge overturning of Longyan Stage in Xiarong Freeway.
unbalanced load. Although the cantilever construc-
tion method of continuous girder bridge is widely
used, the longitudinal overturning stability issue dur-
ing construction can also be considered in case of the
overturning risk of the girder. For example, at about
19:10 on March 1st 2017, at the Longyan Stage in
Xiarong Freeway, the right line of Longtan Bridge
at A7 section of the expansion project overturned
along the axis of the cantilever pouring girder (seen
in Fig. 1). Additionally, a continuous girder bridge
in specific Shenyang Line overturned longitudinally
during cantilever construction stage.
Research on overturning safety issue of continu-
ous girder bridge during the cantilever construction is
mainly divided into the deterministic method and the
reliability method. At present, the parameter uncer-
tainties in the structure are neglected in the stability
evaluation method using safety factor based on deter-
ministic theory, as indicated in Equation (1), which
leads to the unknown level of overturning stability
safety of the continuous girder bridges during the
cantilever construction from the risk point of view.
MW
K=
MQ
where K = safety factor, MW = stabilizing moment,
MQ = overturning moment.
In home and abroad bridge codes, the overturning
stability factor of the bridge structure was introduced
in both the specifications of the China’s highway steel
bridges and the railway bridges. At the section 1.2.12
of Code for Design of Steel Structure and Wood
Structure of Highway Bridges and Culverts (JTJ 025-
86) [1], the bridge structure should ensure the lateral
and longitudinal overturning stability during con-
struction stage, and the stability factor should not
be less than 1.3. However, the resource of the equa-
tion definition was not clear enough and the factor
was determined mainly according to the experience
of humans. At the section 5.1.1 of Basic Specifica-
tions of Railway Bridges and Culverts Design (TB
10002.1-2005) [2], the overturning stability fac-
tor of the reinforced concrete girder bridge structure
should not be less than 1.3 when the correspond-
ing stress exceeds 30% of the allowable value under
vertical live load. The expression of safety factor
comes from the Equation (1) based on the determin-
istic model neglecting the parameter uncertainties. In
addition, a clear overturning stability factor during the
cantilever construction stage is not provided in Chi-
nese design codes of long-span pre-stressed concrete
continuous girder bridge.
The reliability theory provides an effective method
for safety analysis of cantilever construction con-
sidering the parameter uncertainties. Zhang [3] and
(1) Casas [4, 5] respectively used a pre-stressed con-
crete continuous girder bridge as an example to
analyze the stability of long-span continuous girder
bridge during the cantilever construction based on
the reliability method where the structure overturn-
ing stability safety is evaluated through the reliability
index. The design has to be modified, as well as the
reliability index recalculated until the specification
was satisfied if the structural overturning stability
 F. Hu et al. / Stability safety assessment of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction 4029

reliability index did not meet the requirements of the be determined according to the construction quality
specification. to achieve the prescribed target. For the supervision
The current bridge design standards have been organization, the safety factor during construction
developed to the performance-based design concept. stage can be verified according to the target reliability
In other words, the structure was designed accord- index.
ing to the prescribed target reliability index of the
structure in order to ensure the structural safety.
In this way, the overturning stability safety factor 2. Proposed method
was calibrated to guarantee the prescribed reliability
of overturning stability in the cantilever construc- 2.1. Inverse reliability theory
tion. However, the present methods of calculating the
overturning stability safety factor based on the deter- Der Kiureghian, Zhang and Li [13] defined the
ministic model are unable to deal with the calibration inverse reliability problem by the following set of
problem. The inverse reliability theory provides an equations:
effective way to calculate the safety factor under
the premise of specifying the target reliability index. u − βT = 0 (2)
Jiang and Lv [6] studied the stability safety factor
u
of concrete filled steel tube (CFST) arch using the u+ ∇u G(u, θ) = 0 (3)
inverse reliability theory. Cheng et al. [7–9] stud- ∇u G(u, θ)
ied the safety factor of main cable of suspension G(u, θ) = 0 (4)
bridge using the inverse reliability theory. In order
to evaluate the overturning stability of continuous where u = vector of standard normal vari-
girder bridge during cantilever construction, sev- ables; βT = target reliability index of structures;
eral researches have been carried out. Zhang and G(u, θ) = limit state function; ∇u = gradient
Huang [10], Lou and Dong [11], Wu [12] respec- operator with respect to u; θ = the design variable.
tively studied the overturning stability safety factor The basic idea of calculating algorithm for solv-
of continuous girder bridge at the cantilever con- ing parameter is as follows: given βT , find θ(or
struction stage using the inverse reliability theory. mean value of θ), subject to min(uT u) = βT2 and
However, the common drawback of above-mentioned G = G(u, θ) = 0.
studies are as follows: (1) the limit state function was As shown in the development of the forward reli-
not definitely established; (2) the influence factors ability procedure FORM, the vector u at the design
of random variables were not comprehensive; (3) the point must satisfy
overturning stability analysis model needs to be fur-  
ther improved; (4) parameter sensitivity analysis was (∇u G)T u
u= ∇u G (5)
not enough; (5) the engineering meaning is not clear. (∇u G)T ∇u G
Therefore, aiming at the limitations of previous
studies, a calculation method of overturning sta- The reliability index βT is then given by
bility safety factor using inverse reliability theory
−(∇u G)T u
is proposed based on the existing research. Firstly, βT = (6)
mechanical analysis of the cantilever girder bridge [(∇u G)T ∇u G]1/2
during the construction stage was carried out. After Combining Equations (5 and 6), one obtains:
that, the overturning stability analysis model and the
limit state function were established based on the −βT (∇u G)T
mechanical model of continuous girder bridge. Then, u= (7)
[(∇u G)T ∇u G]1/2
the overturning stability safety factor was calculated
and the parameter sensitivity was analyzed using By using a truncated Taylor expansion of G on θ,
the proposed method. Finally, the proposed method at θ 0 and conditional on u = u0 ,
in this paper is applied to calculate the overturning
stability safety factor and to discuss the reasonable G(u0 , θ) = G(u0 , θ 0 )
value for an example continuous girder bridge during 
∂G(u0 , θ) 
cantilever construction. For the construction orga- +  (θ − θ 0 ) = 0 (8)
nization, the safety factor studied in this paper can ∂θ θ0
4030 F. Hu et al. / Stability safety assessment of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction

Fig. 2. Cantilever construction state.

From which, turning instability. The overturning stability safety

factor of pre-stressed concrete continuous girder
G(u0 , θ 0 )
θ = θ0 −  (9) bridge was calculated in the situation of the longest
∂G(u0 ,θ) 
∂θ
 cantilever construction (as shown in Fig. 2). In the
θ0
reliability analysis of structures, the limit state of
The convergence criterion used is, structures was expressed as performance function.
 2  2 The performance function of overturning stability is
(ui+1 − ui  + θ i+1 − θ i  )1/2 as follows,
 2  2 ε (10)
(ui+1  + θ i+1  )1/2 Z = g(X1 , X2 , . . . , Xn ) (11)
where, ε is a small control parameter assigned by the
where, Xi (i = 1, 2, . . . , n) = basic random vari-
user. From the writers’ previous experience, a value
ables.
of 0.0001 usually provides a satisfactory θ estimation.
The performance function of overturning stability
can be expressed as
2.2. Analysis model of the safety factor
Z = MW − KMQ (12)
The continuous girder bridge in the state of
the longest cantilever construction is shown in From Fig. 1, the stabilizing moment MW and over-
Fig. 2, where G1 = weight of travelling form and turning moment MQ can be respectively expressed as
pouring segment at the left side; G2 = weight of follows:
   (l−lg −2lp )/2  e
l − l p − lg
MW = G2 +e + q(x)(x + e)dx + q(x)(e − x)dx + M (13)
2 0 0
   2  2
l − l g − lp q1 b l − lg q2 b l − lg
MQ = (Q + G1 ) −e + × −e + × +e
2 2 2 2 2
 (l−lg −2lp )/2
+ (1 + v)q(x)(x − e)dx (14)
e

travelling form and pouring segment at the right side;
Q = concentrated load of live load during construc-
tion; q1 = uniformly distributed load per unit length
of live-load during construction; q2 = wind load per
unit length; e = bearing eccentricity at the limit state
of instability; l = span length; lg = length of the link-
ing segment between cantilevers; lp = length of the
segment being poured.
The continuous girder bridge in the cantilever
construction stage, due to the asymmetric load
arrangement, there is the danger of the overall over-
2.3. Procedure
The procedures of solving overturning sta-
bility safety factor using the above-mentioned
inverse reliability method can be summarized as
follows:
Step 1. Assume the initial values of the random vari-
ables and unknown deterministic design parameter.
The initial values of the random variables can be their
mean values.
 F. Hu et al. / Stability safety assessment of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction 4031

Table 1
Statistics of basic random parameters
Variables Probability distribution type Mean value Coefficient of variation References
G1 /kN Normal distribution 3298 0.10 Assumed
G2 /kN Normal distribution 3298 0.10 Assumed
Q/kN Normal distribution 80 0.10 [4]
M/kN • m Log-Normal distribution 193770 0.15 [3]
q1 /kPa Normal distribution 0.30 0.15 [3]
q2 /kPa Extreme type-I distribution 0.20 0.15 [4]
v/% Normal distribution 2.5 0.15 [3]
e/m Normal distribution 1.8 0.15 [3]

Table 2
Influence of reliability index on overturning stability safety factor
Target reliability index 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0
Failure probability 0.62 × 10–2 1.3 × 10–3 2.33 × 10–4 3.17 × 10–5 3.40 × 10–6 2.87 × 10–7
Safety factor 1.2239 1.1964 1.1697 1.1437 1.1184 1.0938

Step 2. Initialize the iterative counter i = 1. 3.1. Result of safety factor

Step 3. Calculate u from Equation (7).
Step 4. Substitute u in to Equation (9); the values of
θ (safety factor K) are determined.
Step 5. Check the convergence criterion using Equa-
tion (10); if unsatisfied, set i = i + 1 and go to Step 3;
otherwise, STOP (end of calculation).
3. Application
The example bridge studied here is a long-span
pre-stressed concrete continuous girder bridge with
the span arrangement (72 + 120 + 72) m. The cor-
responding values related to the example bridge
at longest cantilever stage are as follows: G1 =
G2 = 3298 kN, Q = 80 kN, M = 193770(kN • m),
q1 = 0.3 kPa, q2 = 0.2 kPa, v = 0.025, e = 1.8 m,
l = 120 m, lg = 3 m, lp = 4.5 m, b = 15 m (half
bridge).
The statistical values of random variable G1 , G2 ,
Q, M, q1 , q2 , v, e in the example bridge were pre-
sented in Table 1.
Substitute the corresponding value of parameters
into Equations (13 and 14), the performance func-
tion of structural overturning stability can be obtained
from Equation (12).
Z = M + G2 (56.25 + e) + 27508e + 536105
−K[(G1 + Q)(56.25 − e) + 7.5q1 (58.5 − e)2
+7.5q2 (58.5 + e)2 + (1 + v)
(536105 − 22448e)]
To estimate the overturning stability safety fac-
tor using the proposed method, the target reliability
level needs to be specified for the limit state con-
sidered in this study. A target reliability index of
3.5 has been used in the calibration of the OHBD
code and the AASHTO code for bridges. The most
European codes suggested that the target reliability
index for bridge structures should lie in an approxi-
mate range of 3.2–5.2. Based on these data, a target
reliability index of 3.5 and initial value of safety fac-
tor K of 1.5 are used in this study unless otherwise
stated.
A calculated overturning stability safety factor is
1.1697, which is less than the allowable value of 1.3,
with the target reliability index of 3.5. According to
the OHBD code and the AASHTO code, the overturn-
ing stability safety factor of 1.1697 was suggested
according to the reliability index of 3.5.
3.2. Influence of target reliability index
A parameter study was conducted to investigate
how the target reliability index affect the overturning
stability safety factor. Six different values of the target
reliability index are used: 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0.
The results are given in Table 2. In addition, the results
are confirmed by forward reliability analysis, which
was given in Table 3.
It can be seen from Table 2 that the overturn-
ing stability safety factor of continuous girder bridge
decreases obviously when the target reliability index
increases. The estimated safety factor has no differ-
(15) ence according to the adjacent target reliability index
4032 F. Hu et al. / Stability safety assessment of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction

Table 3
Verification of overturning stability safety factors
Target reliability index 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0
Safety factor 1.2239 1.1964 1.1697 1.1437 1.1184 1.0938
Reliability index using JC method 2.4999 2.9999 3.5001 4.0000 4.5001 4.9999

while the corresponding failure probabilities differ

greatly.
The estimated safety factor obtained from the
Equation (1) is 1.3376 which is larger than the results
in Table 2. Thus, neglecting the parameter uncer-
tainties results in a significant overestimation of the
overturning stability safety factor. In order to obtain
an accurate overturning stability safety factor, it is
necessary to consider the parameter uncertainties in
estimating the safety factor.
The current bridge design code has been developed
to the performance-based design concept [14–19],
whose purpose is to design bridge structures at dif-
ferent levels of importance under various risk levels,
so that it is able to meet corresponding performance
Fig. 3. Influence of variation coefficient on overturning stability
requirements [20–22]. The risk level can be deter- safety factor.
mined according to the probability of failure, as well
as the reliability index. Therefore, target reliability
index can be utilized to characterize performance
requirements, and then a reasonable safety factor can
be selected according to the performance require-
ments [23–27]. For example, for the organization
with good construction quality, a smaller safety factor
should be selected to achieve the prescribed reliabil-
ity, while for the organization with lower construction
quality, a larger safety factor should be selected.

3.3. Influence of parameter uncertainties

According to the estimated safety factor based on

the deterministic model, a larger overturning stabil-
ity safety factor can be obtained due to neglecting
the parameter uncertainties. In order to analyze the
influence of parameter uncertainties on overturn-
ing stability safety factor, the estimated overturning
safety factor was shown in Fig. 3 from the range
0.05–0.3 of variation coefficients of random variables
and Fig. 4 from 10%–+10% of mean value of random
variables.
It can be seen from Figs. 3 and 4 that the safety
factor of overturning stability is most sensitive to the
sum of the dead weight of the travelling form and the
pouring segment, the overturning moment and bear-
ing eccentricity of the temporary support have a great
influence on the safety factor, and the deviation of
the weight of cantilever segment, the live load during
Fig. 4. Influence of mean value on overturning stability safety
factor.
construction, the concentrated load at cantilever end
and the wind load during construction stage have little
effect on the safety factor.
The sum of the weight of travelling form and the
pouring segment was considered as a random param-
eter in this paper, which has a great influence on
the overturning stability safety factor. In actual con-
struction of long-span continuous girder bridge, it is
considered as an accidental condition to describe the
situation that the travelling form and pouring seg-
ment fall together. As for the overturning stability
model of continuous girder bridge presented in this
paper, at the worst condition G2 = 0 when travelling
 F. Hu et al. / Stability safety assessment of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction 4033

form and pouring segment fall together, the estimated Table 4

overturning stability safety factor K is 0.9408 under
the prescribed target reliability index of 3.5. On the
contrary, the overturning stability safety factor K is
1.1697. Thus, it can be seen that the falling of the
travelling form has a great influence on the over-
turning stability of the continuous girder bridge. It
is extremely important to ensure the normal working
condition of the travelling form during the construc-
tion stage.
Due to the limited overturning resistant moment
provided by the temporary reinforcement measures
in cantilever construction, the reasonableness of tem-
porary reinforcement measures should be considered
specially (including the overturning resistant moment
of the temporary support and bearing eccentricity) in
cantilever construction stage, so as to ensure struc-
tural overturning stability.
As shown in Figs. 3 and 4, the uncertainties of self-
weight deviation at both cantilever ends have little
effect on the overturning stability safety factor. How-
ever, special attention should be considered to ensure
the quality of pouring concrete during cantilever con-
struction stage so as to ensure the symmetry.
The stacking cases were not same exactly under
different situations. In this paper, the stacking load
during construction is used as a concentrated force
Q. Considering the worst condition of overturning
stability, the concentrated load Q is arranged at the
end of the cantilever structure. Figures 2 and 3 show
that the uncertainties of stacking load have little effect
on the overturning stability safety factor. If the con-
struction organization arrange the stacking load in a
different position from that presented in this paper
during actual construction, the concentrated force Q
can be applied according to the actual construction
situation, and the proposed method in this paper can
also be used to calculate the safety factor.
Although the wind load and live load of construc-
tion have almost no effect on the overturning stability,
the travelling form should be fixed well, and the live
load and the stack load of construction should be well
managed to ensure that the entire bridge structure sta-
ble and safe when there comes a pause due to the
strong wind during the construction stage.
3.4. Effect of distribution type of random
variables
In order to study the effect of distribution type of
random variables on the safety factor, the distribu-
tion type of random variables are divided into three
Influence of distribution type on overturning stability safety factor
Case Safety factor K
Eight normal Eight log-normal Eight different
distributions distributions distributions
β = 2.5 1.2194 1.2377 1.2239
β = 3.5 1.1595 1.1802 1.1697
β = 4.5 1.1013 1.1135 1.0938
Fig. 5. Influence of different initial values of K on calculation
results.
types: eight normal distributions, eight log-normal
distributions, and eight different type distributions
(the distribution of M is log-normal, the distribution
of q2 is extreme type-I, and the distribution of G1 ,
G2 , Q, q1 , v, and e are normal.). The corresponding
results related to three cases of distribution type of
random variables are given in Table 4.
It can be seen form Table 4 that the distribution
type of random variables has a major effect on the
result of overturning stability safety factor. Therefore,
the safety factor related to the practical engineering
application can be obtained only the distribution type
of random variables was determined reasonably.
3.5. Effect of initial value of K
Since the initial value of K0 used in the proposed
method is chosen arbitrarily, it is necessary to inves-
tigate the effect of initial value of K on the estimated
safety factor. For this purpose, five different initial
value of K are used: 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5. The varia-
tions of the overturning stability safety factor with the
iteration number are shown in Fig. 5 where horizontal
ordinate is iteration number.
It can be seen from Fig. 5 that the initial value of K
only affect the convergence of overturning stability
4034 F. Hu et al. / Stability safety assessment of long-span continuous girder bridges in cantilever construction
safety factor while have no influence on the esti-
mated result. Therefore, the proposed method has a
high quality of stability and can be used to estimate
the overturning stability safety factor of long-span
concrete continuous girder bridge when the target
reliability level is specified for the limit state con-
sidered in the design.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, an estimation method for overturn-
ing stability safety factor of long-span pre-stressed
concrete continuous girder bridge based on inverse
reliability theory is proposed. Through the previous
analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) The parameter uncertainties have a great influ-
ence on the overturning stability safety factor.
And the random load will reduce the safety
of overturning stability when the constructed
structure was designed according to the deter-
ministic safety factor.
(2) The overturning stability safety factor of con-
tinuous girder bridge decreases obviously
when the target reliability index increases. For
the organization with good construction qual-
ity, a smaller safety factor should be selected to
achieve the prescribed reliability, while for the
organization with lower construction quality, a
larger safety factor should be selected, so as to
meet the performance requirements.
(3) During cantilever construction stage, setting
of temporary reinforcement measures and the
weight of travelling form and the pouring seg-
ment should be considered specially. When
considering the travelling form and pour-
ing segment falling, live load of construction
arranging, position of stack load changing
in practical engineering, the proposed in this
paper can also be used to estimate the overturn-
ing stability safety factor to meet the prescribed
performance requirements.
(4) The distribution type of random variables
has a major effect on the analysis result
of overturning stability safety factor. There-
fore, the safety factor related to the practical
engineering application can be obtained only
the distribution type of random variables
was determined reasonably through sampling
statistics of actual variables so as to meet the
engineering requirement well.
(5) The initial value of K only affect the con-
vergence of overturning stability safety factor
while have no influence on the estimated result.
Therefore, the proposed method has good
applicability to determining the overturning
stability safety factor.
Acknowledgments
This work presented herein has been supported by
the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under grant number 51278064 and the Science and
Technology Plan Project of Henan Provincial Depart-
ment of Transportation (2013K30). These supports
are gratefully acknowledged.
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