A critical assessment of domestic and foreign temporary vertical regulatory loads on road bridge structures, a way to eliminate their identified shortcomings

Abstract

The article critically assessed temporary vertical standard combined loads on road bridges in Western European countries, the USA and Russia. They are set with constant values of the parameters of their uniformly distributed loads and loads on the axles of trucks without regard to the composition of road traffic and out of communication with the length and shape of the lines of influence of force and deformation factors in the elements of bridge structures and are used in these and in many other countries in road bridge structures engineering and design. It is shown that the bridges constructed with different spans on the same road are designed to have different and unknown for designers, engineers and facility managers load capacity, which decreases when the length of the spans increases more than twice, but that is unacceptable for operational and economic reasons. The author found that the use of regulatory documents of other countries as a model for the modernization of domestic standards is unacceptable due to economic considerations. The article assesses the carrying capacity of such bridges as: the Crimean bridge and the Bugrinsky bridge in Novosibirsk. It is shown that these structures, in case of compliance with the requirements of modern regulatory documents of the Russian Federation, do not allow for the passage of columns of vehicles weighing more than 25–27 tons in a state of congestion. The ways of eliminating the identified deficiencies of these combined regulatory loads are indicated. The results of calculations are presented, indicating that a further increase in the parameter K of the AK load to large values is not an effective way of ensuring the required carrying capacity of bridge structures.