Strength Evaluation of Existing Bridges
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2009-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
A bridge must be inspected on regular basis to ensure public safety and to protect public
investment. Bridge inspection program helps to identify the needs of bridges for repair,
maintenance, preservation, reconstruction and replacement. Many bridges have
collapsed in Ethiopia and other countries. Periodic inspection and maintenance of
bridges helps to avoid this problem.
Recently bridge inventory and inspection program has begun in Ethiopia. This program
has proved to be very useful in providing information about bridges in Ethiopia which
otherwise would have been unavailable. According to a report from this program, quite a
large number of bridges are in critical condition needing immediate intervention. This
can be disastrous if remedial actions are not taken by the concerned bodies in due times.
One of the key components of a bridge inspection is load rating. This is a method to
know the strength of an existing bridge to carry current traffic loads. When the load
rating of a bridge is greater than or equal to one, it implies that the bridge is strong
enough for current traffic conditions. Load rating or strength evaluation of existing
bridges is quite different in some respect from designing of a new bridge. This is because
in strength evaluation, the loads are taken to represent the actual traffic condition.
Since bridge inspection and maintenance activities started recently in Ethiopia, much is
not known about strength evaluation of bridges. This thesis has thus made an attempt to
address such problem by developing a computer program that will be used to load and
evaluate the rates of simple span slab type and girder concrete bridges
Description
Keywords
Existing ;Bridges