PART 1--PRESENTATIONS OF THE BRIDGE ENGINEERING CONFERENCE

In these introductory remarks, the conference chairman addresses several areas where he feels there is a substantial backload of research needs, including most notably, bridge loading. Highway bridge design loads have not changed since 1944, and those for railroad bridges are even older. Their relation to actual loads is tenuous at best. However, Ontario's experience in sampling traffic loads in order to revise specifications shows that loads may change again by the time the new specifications are in place, thus indicating the need for more research in predicting traffic loads. Another issue that are considered are fatigue of structural bridge members, bridge redundancy in design, determining safety factors through statistical rather than empirical means, serviceability and maintence, structural design specifications and the use of prefabrication to cut the cost of bridge replacement.