Open Access

ARTICLE

Safety Evaluation of Bridge under Moving Abnormal Indivisible Load Based on Fusing Bridge Inspection Data and Load Test Data

He Zhang^1,2,*, He-Qing Mu^2,*, Xiao Zhang³, He Zhang², Yuedong Yang⁴

1 Beijing Construction Engineering Quality Third Test Institute Co., Ltd., Beijing, 100037, China
2 School of Civil Engineering and Transportation, State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building and Urban Science, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China
3 Beijing Yongan Municipal Construction & Investment Co., Ltd., Beijing, 102200, China
4 Beijing Municipal Engineering Research Institute, Beijing, 100037, China

* Corresponding Authors: He Zhang. Email: ,; He-Qing Mu. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Health Monitoring and Rapid Evaluation of Infrastructures)

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2025, 19(3), 499-530. https://doi.org/10.32604/sdhm.2025.059070

Received 27 September 2024; Accepted 06 January 2025; Issue published 03 April 2025

Abstract

Safety evaluation of a bridge under Moving Abnormal Indivisible Loads (MAILs) directly relates to whether an oversized and/or overweight Large-Cargo Transportation (LCT) vehicle is permitted to pass the bridge. Safety evaluation can be updated by fusing bridge inspection data and load test data, but there are two fundamental difficulties in updating. The first difficulty is to develop an updating scheme to utilize the unstructured inspection data. The second difficulty is to develop a successive updating scheme using load test data based on the previous updating results of the inspection data. This paper proposed a framework, consisting of three modules, to tackle these two fundamental difficulties of updating. Module one is the updating of Finite Element Model (FEM) and resistance of the bridge based on fusing bridge inspection data and load test data. The first difficulty in utilizing the unstructured inspection data is tackled by introducing updating guidelines using the unstructured inspection data. The second difficulty in conducting a successively updating scheme using load test data based on previous updating results is tackled by Bayesian updating. Module two is the simulation of a bridge under a MAIL, updating the Probability Density Functions (PDFs) of Load Effects (LEs) of critical sections of critical components based on the updated FEM and the given MAIL. Module three is the safety evaluation of the bridge based on the load-bearing capacity index and reliability index, updating indices based on the updated resistance and LE. The illustrative examples consist of a simulated example and an engineering example, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed framework. The simulated example is the safety evaluation of a bridge under a MAIL, and the engineering example is the safety evaluation of the Anning River Bridge of the Yazhong-Jiangxi Ultra-High-Voltage Direct Current (UHVDC) MAIL project. The results show that it is crucial to fuse bridge inspection data and load test data for updating the safety evaluation of bridges under MAILs.

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