Combined Seismic Plus Live Load Analysis of Highway Bridges
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The seismic analysis is a conventional part of structural analysis (Chopra, 2001). All the finite element programs implement it as a basic function. The effects of moving vehicles are always of special concerns in bridge engineering. Previously, vehicles were often approximated as moving loads, which in many cases allows a finite element program to implement it without difficulties. But as increasingly larger transportation vehicles are manufactured, bridges are subjected to larger and heavier loads so that the inertia effect of the vehicles can no longer be neglected.
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