Rapid Assessment of Heavy-Cargo Vehicle Passing on Prefabricated Hollow Slab Bridges Based on Equivalent Actual Traffic Load

Abstract

To address the limited consideration of actual operating traffic loads in safety assessment of heavy-cargo transportation on existing bridges, a rapid assessment method based on equivalent actual traffic load is proposed. Taking 5m to 20 m simply supported prefabricated hollow slab bridges as the object, a six-axle truck is selected as the representative operating vehicle. The load effect of a hydraulic modular trailer with an axle-line load of 180 kN and an axle spacing of 1.55 m is converted into the equivalent gross weight of a six-axle truck. Single-lane vehicle effects and transverse distribution-corrected effects are compared. The results show that, when transverse distribution is ignored, the 20 m span corresponds to equivalent six-axle truck weights of 1986.4 kN and 1658.8 kN in terms of mid-span bending moment and support shear, respectively. After the transverse distribution coefficients are introduced, the equivalent six-axle truck weight corresponding to support shear is significantly reduced. The method provides a reference for rapid preliminary assessment of heavy-cargo transportation on existing heavy-traffic routes.