See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/273405712

Eurocodes and Their Implications for Bridge Design: Background,

Implementation, and Comparison to North American Practice

Article  in  Journal of Bridge Engineering · January 2014

DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)BE.1943-5592.0000567

CITATIONS READS

0 389

3 authors, including:

Bruce Ellingwood H. Gulvanessian

Colorado State University Building Research Establishment BRE
351 PUBLICATIONS   8,109 CITATIONS    21 PUBLICATIONS   129 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

A Risk-Informed Decision Framework to Achieve Resilient and Sustainable Buildings that Meet Community Objectives View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Bruce Ellingwood on 13 November 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Editorial
Eurocodes and Their Implications for Bridge Design:
Background, Implementation, and Comparison to
North American Practice
Bruce R. Ellingwood, Dist.M.ASCE
Distinguished Professor, Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO 80523
(corresponding author). E-mail: bruce.ellingwood@colostate.edu
Ton Vrouwenvelder
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by 54.210.20.124 on 11/04/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
Professor, Technical Univ. of Delft, NL-2628 VK Delft, Netherlands.
E-mail: ton.vrouwenvelder@tno.nl
Haig Gulvanessian
Civil Engineering Consultant and Visiting Professor, Imperial College
London, London SW7 2AZ, U.K. E-mail: Gulvanessian@bre.co.uk
DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)BE.1943-5592.0000567
Codes and standards used for guiding structural design of buildings
and bridges traditionally have been prescriptive and quantitative. In
an era of gradual change in design and construction technologies,
this traditional approach to structural design generally served the
public and the profession well. However, prescriptive standards
do not accommodate technological advances and innovations easily,
and in the last three decades, such occurrences have changed the na-
ture of building design and construction rapidly. At the same time,
the performance of buildings and other structures during extreme
manufactured events and natural phenomena hazards, such as hurri-
canes and earthquakes and flooding, has led to intense public and
professional scrutiny and criticism of current engineering and con-
struction practices. Finally, uncertainties are invariably present in
structural engineering, and standards that do not take these uncer-
tainties into account consistently (or, worse, do not account for them
at all) are an obstacle to advancing structural engineering practice.
With the advent of structural reliability as a tool for the treatment
and analysis of uncertainty, the decades of the 1970s and 1980s
brought the realization that although absolute safety is an unattain-
able goal, uncertainties in structural performance could be quantified
(in terms of uncertainties in structural actions and response and in
material strength and stiffness characteristics) and risk-informed
structural design criteria could be developed that were consistent
with a desired level of performance. With this realization, practical
structural design standards that reflected these reliability principles
evolved quite rapidly. Not only did this transition in thinking regard-
ing structural safety and serviceability evolve rapidly, it evolved in
most modern, postindustrial societies at about the same time.
Modern building and bridge codes used in structural engineering
practice are based on the notions of probability-based limit states
design (PBLSD). In the bridge arena, these include the AASHTO
LRFD Bridge Design Specifications (AASHTO 2012), the Cana-
dian Highway Bridge Design Code (Canadian Standards Association
2006), EN 1990 [European Commission for Standardization (CEN)
1990] and EN 1991-2 (CEN 1991), and EN 1992-2 (Eurocode 2)
(CEN 1992a). There are some differences in the way that PBLSD
has been implemented in the countries that have adopted it, but its
fundamentals are similar in all countries. In addition to the quanti-
tative modeling of uncertainties using probabilistic models and sta-
tistical data, the developers of PBLSD bridge standards have strived
J. Bridge Eng., 2014, 19(1): 3-4
to base such standards on present day principles of structural load
modeling and to use models of structural behavior that are founded
on sound principles of structural mechanics in order for the structural
response to be modeled as accurately as possible (within the con-
straints of practical design). Not surprisingly, PBLSD has opened
the door to new research opportunities and challenges. For one, there
are differences in code format; in the United States, the LRFD format
is practically universal, whereas in Europe, a format that involves
partial material factors and companion action factors has been adop-
ted. From the viewpoint of the practicing structural engineer, these
differences are superficial rather than substantive and stem from
country-dependent traditional design practices that predate the in-
troduction of PBLSD.
The collection of papers presented in the December 2013 special
section on “Eurocodes and Their Implications for Bridge Design:
Background, Implementation, and Comparison to North American
Practice” reflects a broad spectrum of the commonalities and differ-
ences that have arisen in Europe, North America, and elsewhere as
part of the move toward implementing PBLSD in practical bridge
engineering. Marti-Vargas and Hale (2013) compare the treatment
in North American and Eurocode standards of strand transfer length
in prestressed concrete construction. The American Concrete In-
stitute model is based only on the strand parameters, whereas the
Eurocode 2 approach considers concrete properties as well, lead-
ing to a model that is more conservative in its predictions of required
transfer lengths. Walbridge et al. (2013) focus their attention on
United States, Canadian, Eurocode, and Swiss approaches to assess
fatigue in metallic bridge structures using a simulation approach to
show that simultaneous vehicle crossings, which currently are not
considered in fatigue assessment, might increase fatigue damage
substantially. Granata et al. (2013) consider the effects of creep and
shrinkage on prestressed concrete girders using North American and
European approaches, concluding that the Eurocode predictions
underestimate final deflections and the extent of stress redistribution
among girders. Kappos et al. (2013) present a methodology for eval-
uating response modifications factors for earthquake-resistant
design of concrete bridges in Europe and find that the available
force-reduction factors for seven typical bridges are higher than
those used for design, indicating that the strength reserves are typ-
ically larger than those provided by Eurocode 8 (CEN 1992b) or the
AASHTO Bridge Design Specifications (AASHTO 2012). A broad
comparison by Maiorana and Pellegrino (2013) of design provisions
for steel bridge connections in Eurocodes and North American, Aus-
tralian, and Japanese bridge standards reveals vast differences in
assumptions regarding bearing/shear, slip, and minimum edge and
end distances and indicated that the Eurocode provisions are the
most conservative for typical steel connections in bearing and fric-
tion shear and in tension. Anitori et al. (2013) review current and
proposed methods for assessing robustness and redundancy of
bridge structures in Europe and North America; although noting that
the North American provisions are more specific in this regard, they
recommend that future bridge codes should be based on quantifiable
measures of risk. The paper by Gara et al. (2013) on slab cracking in
continuous bridge decks advocates the modular ration approach in
JOURNAL OF BRIDGE ENGINEERING © ASCE / JANUARY 2014 / 3
 the Eurocodes for predicting slab cracking, and emphasizes the
importance in pouring sequence to minimize cracking problems.
Rombach and Kohl (2013) investigate the impact of Eurocode 2
on the design of RC bridge deck slabs constructed without stirrups
for shear, concluding from a comparison of tests to calculated
strength that the Eurocode 2 approach, which is empirical in nature,
is quite conservative for slabs. Finally, Enright et al. (2013) utilize
a traffic microsimulation approach, supported by weigh-in-motion
traffic data, to estimate bridge-load effects caused by congested
traffic loads in a cable-stayed and suspension bridge and compared
the relative merits of the European LM1 and AASHTO HL-93 load
models. They found that whereas the LM1 model is conservative for
long-span bridges, the HL-93 model might underestimate the struc-
tural load effects significantly for certain bridge sites and influence
lines.
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by 54.210.20.124 on 11/04/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
Most papers also present some interesting theoretical and/or ex-
perimental background. However, it is not always clear what moti-
vates the differences in actual design practice between the United
States and Europe or other regions: is there another reliability target?
Is another set of uncertainties covered? Are the design procedures
more or less refined? It would be interesting and useful to continue
the present work in this direction. This is how we really can learn
from each other and improve our design decisions. In this respect,
whereas current PBLSD criteria might be said to be risk informed,
they are not truly risk based. The risk of failing to achieve the perfor-
mance objectives is not reflected in the current probability-based
load and resistance criteria, which generally were based on a calibra-
tion to existing (local) practice.
The bridge engineering community now appears ready to move
toward a more rational risk-based approach to structural engineer-
ing; the papers in this special issue provide technical support for this
move. The new paradigm of performance-based engineering (PBE)
provides an approach for responding to new design and construction
technologies and for tailoring structural design to meet changing
public expectations after natural and manufactured disasters. Profes-
sional groups in many countries are beginning to consider how best
to implement performance-based design in structural engineering
practice. For performance-based design to achieve its full potential,
the performance metrics and design criteria for different bridge
structures and categories of construction must properly reflect the
uncertainties that govern structural performance. Recent advances
in structural reliability theory and applications now make perfor-
mance classification on the basis of acceptable risk possible, en-
abling a move from risk-informed to risk-based design. Nowhere
4 / JOURNAL OF BRIDGE ENGINEERING © ASCE / JANUARY 2014
View publication stats J. Bridge Eng., 2014, 19(1): 3-4
are the payoffs for this move more apparent than in the field of
bridge engineering.
References
AASHTO. (2012). AASHTO LRFD bridge design specifications, Wash-
ington, DC.
Anitori, G., Casas, J. R., and Ghosn, M. (2013). “Redundancy and robust-
ness in the design and evaluation of bridges: European and North
American perspectives.” J. Bridge Eng., 18(12), 1241–1251.
Canadian Standards Association. (2006). “Canadian highway bridge design
code.” CAN/CSA-S6-06, Ottawa.
Enright, B., Carey, C., and Caprani, C. C. (2013). “Microsimulation eval-
uation of Eurocode load model for American long-span bridges.” J.
Bridge Eng., 18(12), 1252–1260.
European Committee for Standardization (CEN). (1990). “Basis for struc-
tural design.” Eurocode 0, Brussels, Belgium.
European Committee for Standardization (CEN). (1991). “Actions on struc-
tures, part 2: Traffic loads on bridges.” Eurocode 1, Brussels, Belgium.
European Committee for Standardization (CEN). (1992a). “Design of con-
crete structures, part 2: Reinforced and prestressed concrete bridges.”
Eurocode 2, Brussels, Belgium.
European Committee for Standardization (CEN). (1992b). “Design of
structures for earthquake resistance, part 2: Bridges.” Eurocode 8,
Brussels, Belgium.
Gara, F., Graziano, L., and Dezi, L. (2013). “Slab cracking control in con-
tinuous steel-concrete bridge decks.” J. Bridge Eng., 18(12), 1319–
1327.
Granata, M. F., Margiotta, P., and Arici, M. (2013). “Simplified procedure
for evaluating the effects of creep and shrinkage on prestressed concrete
girder bridges and the application of European and North American
prediction models.” J. Bridge Eng., 18(12), 1281–1297.
Kappos, A. J., Paraskeva, T. S., and Moschonas, I. F. (2013). “Response
modification factors for concrete bridges in Europe.” J. Bridge Eng.,
18(12), 1328–1335.
Maiorana, E., and Pellegrino, C. (2013). “Comparison between Eurocodes
and North American and main international codes for design of bolted
connections in steel bridges.” J. Bridge Eng., 18(12), 1298–1308.
Martí-Vargas, J. R., and Hale, W. M. (2013). “Predicting strand transfer
length in pretensioned concrete: Eurocode versus North American
practice.” J. Bridge Eng., 18(12), 1270–1280.
Rombach, G., and Kohl, M. (2013). “Shear design of RC bridge deck slabs
according to Eurocode 2.” J. Bridge Eng., 18(12), 1261–1269.
Walbridge, S., Fischer, V., Maddah, N., and Nussbaumer, A. (2013). “Si-
multaneous vehicle crossing effects on fatigue damage equivalence
factors for North American roadway bridges.” J. Bridge Eng., 18(12),
1309–1318.