System-level Structural Reliability of Bridges

• Main Author: Elhami Khorasani, Negar
• Other Authors: Gauvreau, Douglas Paul
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Bridge engineering; Robustness; Reliability analysis; Redundancy; Two-girder and two-web bridges; 0543
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/30141

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that two-girder or two-web structural systems can be employed to design efficient bridges with an adequate level of redundancy. The issue of redundancy in two-girder bridges is a constraint for the bridge designers in North America who want to take advantage of efficiency in this type of structural system. Therefore, behavior of two-girder or two-web structural systems after failure of one main load-carrying component is evaluated to validate their safety. A procedure is developed to perform system-level reliability analysis of bridges. This procedure is applied to two bridge concepts, a twin steel girder with composite deck slab and a concrete double-T girder with unbonded external tendons. The results show that twin steel girder bridges can be designed to fulfill the requirements of a redundant structure and the double-T girder with external unbonded tendons can be employed to develop a robust structural system.