IMPORTANT CONCEPTS IN BRIDGE

ENGINEERING
• Bridge: A structure having an opening not less than 6000
mm that forms part of a highway or over, or under which
the highway passes.
• Collapse: A major change in geometry of the bridge
rendering it unfit for use.
• Design: Proportioning and detailing the components and
connections of a bridge.
• Design life: Period of time up on which the statistical
deviation of a transient load is based: 75 years for
AASHTO specifications.
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• Service life: The period of time that the bridge is expected
to be in operation.
• Force effect: A deformation stress or stress resultant i.e.
axial force, shear force, torsional or flexure moment, caused by
applied loads, imposed deformations or volumetric changes.
• Load factors: A factor accounting for variability of
loads, the lack of accuracy in analysis, and the probability of
simultaneous occurrence of different loads.
• Resistance factor: A factor accounting for the
variability of material properties, structural dimensions, and the
workmanship, and the uncertainty in the prediction of
resistance.

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Limit state: A condition beyond which the
bridge or component of the bridge ceases to
satisfy the provisions for which it was designed.

Strength limit state shall be taken to ensure

that strength and stability, both local and
global, are provided to resist the specified
statistically significant load combination that a
bridge is expected to experience in its design
life.

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• Service limit state: The service limit state shall be taken
as restriction on stress, deformation and crack width under
regular service conditions.
• Fatigue limit state shall be taken as a set of restrictions on
stress range due to a single design truck occurring at the
number of expected stress range cycles.
• Fracture limit state shall be taken as a set material
toughness requirements of AASHTO material
specifications.
• Extreme event limit state shall be taken to ensure the
structural survival of a bridge during a major earthquake or
flood, or when collided by a vehicle, vehicle or ice flow
under scored conditions.
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• Traditional minimum depth (span to depth
ratio) for constant depth super structure is
given as follows:
1. R.C.C Slabs:
Simple span = 1.2(S + 3000)/30
= 1.2(S + 10)/30 (in fps system)
Continuous spans = (S + 3000)/30

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2. For R.C.C T-Beams:
Simple span = 0.070L
Continuous = 0.065L

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3. For Pre-stressed I Beams:
Simple span = 0.045L
Continuous spans = 0.040L

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4. Steel I Beams:
Simple span (over all depth) = 0.040L
Continuous = 0.032L
5. For Trusses = 0.100L

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• Major reason of Bridge failure: A majority of
bridges that have failed in the United States
and else where have failed due to scour.
• Permit vehicle: Any vehicle whose right to
travel is administratively restricted in anyway
due to its weight or size.
• Super structure: structural parts of the bridge
which provides the horizontal span.

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• Sub structure: Structural parts of the bridge
which supports the horizontal span.
• Maximum ADT: Research has shown that
average daily traffic ADT, including all vehicles,
i.e, cars and trucks, is physically limited to
about 20,000 vehicles per lane per day under
normal conditions.
• ADTT: Average daily truck traffic.

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• Deformation: A change in structural geometry
due to force effects, including axial
displacements, shears displacements and
rotations.
• Skin friction: acts upward on the side of piles
or piers and thus supports the foundation.
• c/c distance between piles:
It should be ≥ 750 mm (30″) or 2.5 times pile
dia.

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• Distance between centre of pile to edge of
pile cap: should be ≥ 225 mm (9 inches)
• Piers: The part of the bridge structure
between the super structure and the
connection with the foundation.
• Abutments: A structure that supports the end
of a bridge span, and provides lateral support
for fill material on which the road way rests
immediately adjacent to the bridge.

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• Counterfort: A counterfort wall consists of a
thin concrete face slab, usually vertically
supported at intervals on inner side by vertical
slabs or counterforts that meet the face slab at
right angles.
• Pile: A relatively slender deep foundation unit,
wholly or partly embedded in the ground,
installed by driving, drilling, or otherwise, and
which derives its capacity from surrounding soil
and/or from the soil or rock strata below its tip.
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• Use of piles: piling should be considered when
footings cannot be founded on rock, stiff
cohesive or granular foundation material at
reasonable cost. Pile may be used as a
protection against scour.

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• Minimum design penetration (Embedment
length in the soil):
3000 mm for hard cohesive or dense granular.
6000 mm for soft cohesive or loose granular.
• Resistance of piles: shall be determined through
subsurface investigations, laboratory and/or in-
situ tests, analytical methods, pile load test, and
by referring to the history of past performance.
• Down drag: Down drag results from settlement
of the ground adjacent to the pile or shaft. It acts
downward and loads the foundation.
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IMPORTANT POINTS FOR
BRIDGE DESIGN

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• Road way widths: When the traffic is crossing
the bridge, there should not be a sense of
restriction. To avoid a sense of restriction
requires that the roadway width on the bridge
be the same as that of the approaching
highway.

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Loads: to be considered in bridge design can be
divided into two broad categories:
• Permanent loads, and,
• Transient loads.

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Permanent loads:
• Self weight of girders and deck
• wearing surface
• curbs and railings
• utilities and pressures from earth retainments.
Two important dead loads are:
DC: Dead load of structural components and non structural
attachments.
DW: Dead load of wearing surface.
• γbitumen = 2250 kg/m3 = 22.1 kN/m3
• γconcrete = 2400 kg/m3 = 23.6 kN/m3
• The maximum load factor for DC = 1.25
• The maximum load factor for DW = 1.5

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Transient loads:
• Gravity loads due to vehicular,
• Railway and pedestrian traffic.
• Lateral loads due to water and wind i.e., floes (sheet of floating
ice), ship collisions and earthquake, temperature fluctuations,
creep and shrinkage etc.
• Some loads such as ship collision etc are important loads for
substructure design.
• The effects of these loads will be different for super structure and
sub structure.
• The automobile is one of the most common vehicular live load on
most bridges; it is the truck that causes the critical load effects.

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• AASHTO design loads attempt to model the truck traffic
that is highly variable.
• The principal load effect is the gravity load of the truck
but other effects are significant and must be considered.
• Such effect includes
 impact (dynamic effects),
 braking forces,
 centrifugal forces (if present) and
 the effects of other trucks simultaneously present.
• Different design limit states may require slightly different
truck models.

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Design Lanes: The number of lanes a bridge may
accommodate must be established and is
important design criterion. Two such terms are
used in the lane design of the bridge:
 Traffic lane,
 Design lane.

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• Traffic lane: is the number of lanes of traffic
that the traffic engineer plans to route across
the bridge.
Lane width is associated with a traffic lane
and is typically 3600mm = 3.6 m = 12 ft.
• Design lane: is the lane designation used by
the bridge engineer for live load placement.
The design lane width and location may or
may not be the same as that of the traffic lane.

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AASHTO uses a 3000 mm = 3.0 m = 10.0 ft
design lane and Vehicles is to be positioned
within the lane for extreme effects.
No of Design lanes [A361.1.1] = Clear roadway
width (mm) / 3600 mm = rounded to larger
integer.
Clear roadway width is the distance between the
curbs or barriers.

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When traffic lane width < 3600 mm
No. of design lanes = No. of traffic lanes, and
Width of design lane = Width of traffic lane
For roadway width from 6000 to 7200 mm (20 ft
to 24 ft), two design lanes should be used. And,
Design lane width = ½ × Roadway width

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The direction of traffic in the present and future
scenarios should be considered and the most
critical cases should be used for design.

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Vehicular design loads:
A study by the Transportation Research Board
(TRB) was used as a basis for AASHTO loads
(TRB, 1990).
It was felt by the engineers developing the load
model that the exclusion truck (over loaded or
more than allowed legally) best represented the
extremes involved in the present truck traffic
(Kulicki 1992).

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The AASHTO design loads model consists of
three distinctly different loads:
Design truck,
Design Tandem,
Design lane

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It has 3 basic Live Loads for bridges called HL-93
Loading (where H stands for highway and L
stands for Loading, developed in 1993).
• Design Truck
• Design Tandem
• Design Lane

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1. Design Truck:
It is commonly called as HS-20 44 (where H
stands for highway, S for semi-trailer, 20 TON
weight of the tractor (1st two axles) and was
proposed in 1944)
2. Design Tandem:
It consists of two axles weighing 25 kips (110 KN)
each spaced at 4 ft (1.2 m)

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Design Tandem

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3. Design Lane:
It consists of uniformly distributed load of .64
kip/ft (9.3 N/mm) and assumed to occupy 10 ft
(3 m) transversely.

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HL-93 IS THE MAXIMUM OF THE TWO
Design Tandem + Design Lane
Design Truck + Design Lane

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