Date of Graduation

12-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Civil Engineering (MSCE)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Civil Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Heymsfield, Ernest

Committee Member

Hernandez, Sarah V.

Second Committee Member

Prinz, Gary S.

Keywords

Bridge; Bridge Posting; Civil Engineering; Engineering; Influence Line; WIM

Abstract

Despite actual truck demographics evolving over the past 30 years, the Arkansas legal loads for bridge posting have not been updated. Custom computer codes were developed.to facilitate comparison between the current Arkansas legal loads for bridge posting and the actual Arkansas truck traffic to ensure that actual reactions are enveloped by the state'. The program, WIMFluence, calculates shear and moment influence lines for a bridge and the resulting shear and moment reactions based on weigh-in-motion data. With supporting scripts, the reactions due to actual Arkansas truck traffic were compared to those due to the current Arkansas legal loads for bridge posting. The program and scripts enabled the researchers to determine if the Arkansas legal loads for bridge posting envelop the bridge response values due to Arkansas’s actual truck traffic and to recommend revisions to said legal loads. This thesis details the methodology employed within WIMFluence and its supporting scripts.

Along with this thesis is a zipped folder, WIMFluenceSourceAndManual.zip, of supplementary materials. This folder contains the source code for WIMFluence and its supporting scripts, a manual for use of WIMFluence and the scripts, and copyright license information files.

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