Paper in Structural Engineering International

I’m excited to announce my most recent publication, in the IABSE journal of Structural Engineering International.
After the IABSE conference in May of 2013, a number of authors were invited to submit a paper to this special edition on “Assessment, Upgrading, Refurbishment and Conservation of Infrastructures” – and we were among these.

You can access the online version of the paper here.

The abstract of the paper is the following:

Upon assessment of existing reinforced concrete short-span solid slab bridges according to the recently implemented Eurocodes that include more conservative shear capacity provisions and heavier axle loads, a number of these structures were found to be shear-critical. The results from recent experimental research on the shear capacity of slabs indicate that slabs benefit from transverse load distribution. Recommendations for the assessment of solid slab bridges in shear are developed on the basis of these experiments. A load spreading method for the concentrated loads is proposed and the applicability of superposition of loading is studied. The resulting most unfavourable position for the design trucks is provided and implemented in the so-called Dutch “Quick Scan” method (QS-EC2). Cases of existing bridges are studied with the previously used QS-VBC as well as with the QS-EC2 that includes the recommendations. As a result of the assumed transverse load distribution, the shear stress to be considered at the support based on the recommendations becomes smaller.

The keywords of this paper are: EFFECTIVE WIDTH; LIVE LOADS; LOAD DISTRIBUTION; REINFORCED CONCRETE; SHEAR; SLAB BRIDGES.