Life Expectancy of Highway Bridges to Vehicle Loads

Abstract

Life expectancy of highway bridges to vehicle loads is studied. Vehicular traffic is represented by the Poisson process and response of bridges is considered as a filtered Poisson process. A method is developed to obtain, numerically, peak probability density function and expected total number of peaks per unit time of stress response of bridges. These quantities are used in conjunction with Palmgren-Miner's theory of cumulative damage to predict the fatigue life of a particular bridge.