Multi-Scale Reliability and Serviceability Assessment of In-Service Long-Span Bridges

With the development in global economic and transportation engineering, the traffic loads on brides have been growing steadily, which become potential safety hazards for existing bridges. In particular, long-span suspension bridges support heavy traffic volumes and simultaneous truck loads on the bridge deck, and thus the safety and serviceability of the bridge deserves investigation. In this book, a multiscale reliability method is presented for the safety assessment of long-span bridges. The multiscale failure condition of stiffness girders is the first-passage criteria for the large-scale model and the fatigue damage criteria for the small-scale model. It is the objective of this book to provide a more in-depth understanding of the vehicle-bridge interaction from the random vibration perspective. This book is suitable for adoption as a text book or a reference book in an advanced structural reliability analysis course. Furthermore, this book also provides a theoretical foundation for better understanding of the safety assessment, operation management, maintenance and reinforcement for long-span bridges and motivates further research and development for more advanced reliability and serviceability assessment techniques for long-span bridges.

Naiwei Lu is a lecturer of civil engineering at Changsha University of Science and Technology.