Structural Impacts of Truck Platooning on Prestressed Concrete Bridges

The advancement of connected and autonomous vehicle technology has enabled the formation of truck platoons, where two or more trucks travel closely and at high speeds. While truck platooning offers fuel savings and increases road efficiency, it raises concerns about the potentially higher load effects it places on existing bridges than what they were designed to withstand. Previous research has predominantly focused on the structural safety aspect of truck platooning's impact on bridges, with limited attention given to evaluating its effect on the serviceability limit state performance of bridges. This study aims to address this gap by investigating the impact of truck platooning on the serviceability of prestressed concrete bridges. A set of bridge archetypes, varying in span lengths and girder spacings, are considered in such investigation. Through probabilistic models that account for load effects and structural resistance, the reliability indices are determined for these bridges under assorted truck platoon configurations. The impact of truck platooning is then assessed by comparing the bridges’ reliability when subjected to platoon loads against the predefined target reliability or the reliability under standard traffic loads, the latter determined from statistical analysis of Weigh-in-Motion data. The results emphasize that certain platoon configurations may satisfy the ultimate limit state requirements but fail to meet those of the serviceability limit state. This underscores the essential need to evaluate bridges against different limit states to ensure their structural integrity is preserved when subjected to truck platoon loads.