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Analysis Of Traffic Loads On Bridges: Report Ii Characteristics Of Traffic On Ohio River Bridges - 1968, Robert L. Lynch

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The recent bridge disaster at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, has renewed concern about the mechanism of material fatigue as a possible cause of catastrophic failure of bridge structures. A reasonable methodology for evaluating the fatigue condition of the highway bridge requires a knowledge of the distribution of traffic loads utilizing the facility during the analysis period. The accuracy of such an analysis is dependent on the accuracies of the input data -- material fatigue properties and traffic characteristics. The more critical of the above parameters, with respect to accuracy, appears to be traffic characteristics. This is especially true of vehicle …