Completed

Project Objectives

The research objective will be to determine the in-service performance of the NETC bridge railings and transition systems based on the percentage of fatal and serious injury crashes and barrier penetrations. The evaluation should examine all NETC bridge railing sites constructed in each cooperating state. Construction records and bridge inventories will be reviewed to develop an inventory of NETC bridge railings. Crash data for five years (and more if possible) will be collected for all NETC bridge railings identified in the inventory. Traffic data (e.g., posted speed limit, AADT and percent trucks) will also be collected, if available, for each inventoried NETC bridge rail. The crash, inventory and traffic data will be merged into a single database and the fatal and serious injury proportions will be calculated for each type of NETC railing by a variety of potentially confounding factors (e.g., posted speed limit, vehicle type, highway facility type, percent trucks, etc.). Similarly, the crash records will be examined for any indication of bridge railing penetration or rollover. This study should be conducted using the now available NCHRP 22-33 Guidance for the conduct of ISPEs. NCHRP 22-33 (Collaborative Approach to In-Service Performance Evaluations) has outlined an approach to the conduct of ISPEs which uses crash data to mimic the MASH evaluation criteria, thereby providing a direct comparison of actual field performance to the MASH evaluation criteria. Further, the NCHRP 22-33 Guidance was developed with the intent of collaborating across state lines to conduct more robust ISPEs just as is being proposed herein.

Technical Committee Members

• TC Chair, Jeff Folsom: Maine Department of Transportation
• David Kilpatrick, Connecticut Department of Transportation
• TBD, Massachusetts Department of Transportation
• Chelsea Noyes, New Hampshire Department of Transportation
• Chris Gagnon, Rhode Island Department of Transportation
• Chris Mooney, Vermont Agency of Transportation

AC Liaison: Dale Peabody, Maine Department of Transportation

Project Coordinator, Kirsten Seeber, CTC & Associates

Implementation Activities

MaineDOT is using these results to provide evidence that NETC rail performs well. MaineDOT changed their standard details to formally adopt MASH without crash testing because this study and the previous FEA modeling study show good performance.

Project Objectives

In order to capitalize on the knowledge and methodology developed from ongoing research on new improved load rating procedures for deteriorated unstiffened steel beam ends, the structure of the proposed project will be designed accordingly. The research will identify and quantify the most common beam-end corrosion topologies across states in New England. The goal of this work is to enhance load rating methods for assessing corroded unstiffened beam ends to avoid overly conservative bridge posting recommendations. The new developed methods from ongoing research in the state of Massachusetts calculate more accurately the load carrying capacity. However, the wide application of the new procedures needs to be validated with experiments including several different configurations, beam sizes, corrosion shapes, and support conditions. Laboratory testing will validate and enrich the new procedures while providing valuable insight into the failure mechanisms that control these scenarios. Finally, finite element computational calculations will be calibrated using the produced experimental data from full-scale testing of the corroded beams.

Technical Committee Members

• TC Chair, Matthew Weidele, Massachusetts Department of Transportation
• Greg Funk, Connecticut Department of Transportation
• James Costigan, Maine Department of Transportation
• Joel Veilleux, Maine Department of Transportation
• Nicholas Goulas, New Hampshire Department of Transportation
• Join Poisson, New Hampshire Department of Transportation
• Christopher Gagnon, Rhode Island Department of Transportation
• Keary LeBeau, Rhode Island Department of Transportation
• Andrew Lemieux, Vermont Agency of Transportation

AC Liaison: Nicholas Zavolas, Massachusetts Department of Transportation

Project Coordinator, Kirsten Seeber, CTC & Associates

Implementation Activities

Tech Transfer Activities

• August 22, 2023 – New York City Bridge Conference, New York, NY
• May 3, 2023 – MassDOT Transportation Innovation Conference, Worcester, MA
• January 8-12, 2023 – Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Washington D.C. Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Washington D.C.
• July 24-28, 2022 – 2022 AASHTO Research Advisory Committee Annual Meeting, Newton, MA
• June 20, 2022 – Transportation Research Board Summer Meeting, Virtual
• May 31-June 3, 2022 – Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference, Baltimore, MD
• May 24-25, 2022 – MassDOT Transportation Innovation Conference, Worcester, MA
• May 6, 2022 – NEW.Mech Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
• January 9-13, 2022 – Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Washington D.C.

Project Objectives

This project’s objective is to develop guidelines for the design of curved integral abutment bridges. These guidelines should address recommendations for span length, total bridge length and degree of curvature and skew, with modeling recommendations for design which are consistent with the current AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications.

Technical Committee Members

• TC Chair, Alex Bardow: Massachusetts Department of Transportation
• Raymond Basar, Connecticut Department of Transportation
• Rich Myers, Maine Department of Transportation
• Kevin Daigle, New Hampshire Department of Transportation
• Jim Lacroix, Vermont Agency of Transportation

AC Liaison: Emily Parkany, Vermont Agency of Transportation

Friend of the Committee: Nicholas Zavolas, Massachusetts Department of Transportation

Project Coordinator: Kirsten Seeber, CTC & Associates