Summary
Roughan and O’Donovan Innovative Solutions carried out, over a period of years, a series of analytical studies of weigh-in-motion (WIM) data from the Netherlands.
Solution
The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment was concerned by fatigue damage to orthotropic plate bridges, resulting from the large percentages of Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) travelling on its road infrastructure.
ROD-IS carried out a detailed assessment of the Gross Vehicle Weights (GVWs), axle groups, individual axle loads and speeds of vehicles from a WIM system.
This involved analysing data for 1,400,000 vehicles, including over 440,000 trucks, plotting key statistics and calculating characteristic loads.
Challenge
Discovery that the five equivalent vehicle classes defined in the Eurocode, and used to assess fatigue, were insufficient to represent the high vehicle weights and frequencies in the Netherlands, presented a challenge.
By identifying three additional vehicle classes, and quantifying their respective frequencies, we provided an effective assessment of fatigue loading on bridges in the Netherlands.
Services
- Weigh-in-Motion
- Data analysis