Live-Load Distribution on Glued-Laminated Timber Girder Bridges. Final Report: Conclusions and Recommendations

摘要

Increased use of timber bridges in the U.S. transportation system has required additional research to improve the current design methodology of these bridges. For this reason, the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (FPL), and the Federal Highway Administration have supported several research programs to attain the objective listed above. This report is a result of a study sponsored by the FPL, with the objective of determining how highway truckloads are distributed to girders of a glued-laminated timber bridge. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Official (AASHTO) load and resistance factor design (LRFD) Bridge Design Specification provides live-load distribution provisions for glued-laminated girder timber bridges that were used in previous AASHTO Specifications. The AASHTO live-load distribution provisions were reviewed in this report. Field-test results were used to review the current AASHTO LRFD glued-laminated timber girder bridge-design specifications and to validate analytical results obtained by finite-element analyses.