SSSBA Provides Bridge Owners With Complimentary Design Details

The Short Span Steel Bridge Alliance is offering a complimentary service that allow for the production of standard rolled beam and plate girder designs for highway bridge applications. The designs conform to both AASHTO as well as owner-specified criteria.

The designs are individually compared against external software programs to ensure their compliance with owner preferences and pertinent limit states.

The SSSBA offers this service free to State Departments of Transportation.

Benefits of Standardized Designs

The service, developed by researchers at West Virginia University and Marshall University, afford owner agencies the ability to rapidly develop steel bridge design detail standards tailored for any specified:

• Cross section
• Span configuration
• Loadings
• State specific practices for various detailing items

The potential savings in material cost realized by designing each structure individually for every site situation are far outweighed by standardizing the design of these structures. That is, utilization of similar beam sizing across the board for similar span arrangements, utilization of common details, utilization of common fabrication practices far outweighs any negligible material savings associated with design on a site by site basis.

This has broad implications for improved quality and efficiency in our infrastructure – it allows:

• Owners to have a real time understanding of cost.
• Bridge inspection community to be better equipped to perform inspections on industry vetted an know details.
• Fabricators to have readily available approved design and detailing files to expedite project delivery.
• Contractors to be more fined tuned to successfully perform jobs with a minimum of problems related to design flaws or complicate to install pieces.
• Transportation system users a more cost effective and efficient infrastructure system.

See sample design standards prepared for Ohio DOT and West Virginia DOT. 

Get Started with Developing Complimentary Standard Bridge Designs

Learn more about this complimentary service offered to state DOTs by downloading the document, Automated Production of Robust Owner-Specific Steel Bridge Design Details.

For questions, or to set up a meeting to discuss how you can get started developing complimentary standard bridge designs within your state, contact:

Karl E. Barth, Ph.D.
Co-Director, SSSBA Bridge Technology Center
Jack H. Samples Distinguished Professor at West Virginia University
Email: Karl.Barth@mail.wvu.edu

Gregory K. Michaelson, Ph.D., P.E.
Co-Director, SSSBA Bridge Technology Center
Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering at Marshall University
Email: michaelson@marshall.edu

Dan Snyder
Director, SSSBA
Senior Director of Business Development, American Iron and Steel Institute
Email: dsnyder@steel.org