Assessment of Current Design Loads for Permit Vehicles, Final Report

016086132016Final Report: 7/24/2015 \u2013 5/23/2016Technical Advisor Charles E. Carey, P.E. chcarey@pa.govPDFOtherFHWA-PA-2016-003-PSU WO 164400008014, PSU WO 16Data analysisDesign loadEvaluation and assessmentHighway bridgesPermitsHighwaysMotor CarriersOperations and Traffic ManagementPennsylvaniaUnited StatesUnited States. Federal Highway AdministrationJeffrey A. LamanMeet ShahThomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation InstitutePennsylvania. Dept. of Transportation. Bureau of Planning and ResearchUnited States. Federal Highway AdministrationUS Transportation CollectionThis study was designed to evaluate the current Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) Live Load Design Permit Vehicle, P-82 (8-axle, 204-kip truck configuration) and PHL-93 for adequacy as a model to predict loading effects of current special hauling permit vehicles, specifically from the heaviest Pennsylvania-issued superload permits. Where the current P-82 and PHL-93 truck load models and their corresponding effects do not envelope the recent and anticipated special hauling permit vehicle effects, a recommendation for an enveloping truck model and/or revisions to bridge analysis policies is made. This study is based on databases and documents provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. A fundamental objective of this study was to develop the analytical tools needed to evaluate the truck data files, both weight-in-motion (WIM) and superloads. An analytical tool was developed to filter WIM data files where the files contained exceedingly large numbers of vehicle lines that were not of interest to the study. Primary analytical tools were developed to enable an automated procedure to simulate the passage of large numbers of trucks, including WIM database trucks, permit database trucks, and established permit vehicle load models, over several bridge configurations to obtain the maximum moments and shears. The final objective was to construct a proposed permit design vehicle model that envelopes all or most WIM and superload vehicles in the PennDOT-provided databases. This permit design vehicle construction required processing of the WIM and superload vehicles by characterizing the population by vehicle width, number of axles, axle spacings, axle loads, axle group loads, and gross vehicle weight. Characterization for a given vehicle class includes averages, standard deviations, 95th percentiles, and maximums. The final result is the construction of a proposed permit design vehicle for PennDOT consideration.75