National heavy vehicle bridge assessment system a step closer

A scoping
study assessing the feasibility of developing a National Heavy Vehicle Bridge
Assessment System has been published by Austroads.

Bridge
assessment processes are a major constraint in delivering reliable and timely heavy
vehicle access to the national road network, according to Austroads.

The large
range of vehicle types and masses on an equally diverse range of bridge types
and sizes requires detailed engineering analysis that can be costly, time
consuming and hindered by inadequate data.

The study envisions an assessment system that would:

• automate
  and compare calculated infrastructure impacts caused by loading from a
  nominated vehicle with the known capacity of the structure, recorded against
  all the structures in the database; 
• be
  capable of plotting bespoke networks for a given vehicle in real-time or near
  real-time; and
• access
  national data for bridge structures.

Austroads plans
to launch a detailed evaluation of options (in line with the study’s
recommendations) as part of its upcoming project NEF6274.