| Abstract: | A heuristic approach is presented for interactive analysis of statically determinate and indeterminate bridge trusses subjected to moving loads such as the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) specifications live loads. These loads consist of two-axle truck loading, two-axle truck plus one-axle semitrailer loading, and uniform lane loading. The procedure is based on using the information about the shape of the influence line diagrams (ILDs) for members of a truss. This information may be obtained through numerical experimentation for any given type of truss. A methodology is presented for classifying the ILDs for member axial forces of a bridge truss. The procedure is applied to Pratt trusses. Heuristic rules are developed for finding the maximum compression and tensile forces in the members of a Pratt truss based on its characteristic influence line diagrams and the type of the AASHTO live load. The procedure presented in this article results in substantial savings in structural analysis computations, and is specially suitable on microcomputers in an interactive environment. |
