United States Department of Transportation
Impact of bridge ratings on the timber transportation industry.
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2009-08-01
File Language:
English
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Abstract:The logging industry plays an important role in the State of Wisconsin’s economy. Additionally, the condition of some of Wisconsin’s bridges, as ; well as the state of our nation’s bridges, is deteriorated due to lack of funding for replacement. As a result of this, bridges are being load posted ; which prohibits travel over them by many commercial vehicles. One industry in particular that is of interest to this project is the forest ; products/timber industry, but Wisconsin’s dairy industry is also extensively affected. As a result of the load posting, hauling routes are longer due to ; detours and it is costing the timber industry more money to haul raw timber. The purpose of this project was to investigate the current load ratings of ; bridges and look at the effects that logging vehicles have on single span bridges. Following these analyses, solutions to help alleviate some of the ; challenges the timber industry is experiencing due to load posted bridges were examined. ; Currently, bridges in Wisconsin are load rated based on specified unique design vehicles such has the HS20. This project looked into how the ; moment and shear effects of logging trucks compared to the effects of common design and State vehicles. Thirty-one logging vehicles with varying ; configurations and gross weights were measured and used in this comparison analysis. ; In addition to the logging truck analysis and comparison, several bridges that are of major concern to a prominent timber association in Wisconsin, the ; Great Lake Timber Professionals Association, were investigated and load rated using the two currently available methods, the Load Factor Rating ; method and the Load and Resistance Factor Rating method. This was done to better understand the methods used for load rating and to compare the ; load ratings from this project with current load postings. ; Lastly, possible solutions to the current issues the Great Lake’s Timber Professionals Association and the timber industry are experiencing were ; investigated. The first solution was looking at optimization of the current logging vehicles including optimizing the distribution of weight on the axles ; as well as optimizing the axle configuration on the truck to decrease the effects of the trucks on bridges. Additionally, the amount of gross weight ; reduction for timber trucks that would be necessary to reduce effects to a level equivalent to the design vehicles was calculated. ; The final solution that was investigated was looking into potential economical bridge strengthening options. The main option that was considered was ; the use of Mechanically Fastened Fiber Reinforced Polymer Strips as a strengthening option for reinforced concrete bridges. This strengthening ; technique has been previously utilized successfully in Missouri. Wisconsin bridge B380513, which is load posted and a large concern to the logging ; industry has been chosen and examined as a candidate for strengthening using this technique
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Main Document Checksum:urn:sha256:f0a513bed06f1772dd92363b0dccbab86c8cff18d06bb732c113826beefa56e0
File Language:
English
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