Barge Collision Design of Highway Bridges

Method II of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Guide Specification and Commentary for Vessel Collision Design of Highway Bridges focuses mainly on ship impact design. Consequently, the current specifications in Method II are limited mainly to bridges in maritime waterways. Bridges over inland waterways, though, are more susceptible to impact from barges. However, no inland waterway bridges are known to have been designed for barge impact using Method II due to the tremendous variation in flotilla sizes, barge types, and barge sizes. A method by which available barge and flotilla data may be utilized to develop the risk assessment procedures for vessel impact design problems in accordance with design Method II is presented. The methodologies presented in this paper are applicable to all navigable inland waterways in the United States and the world. For illustrative purposes, a design example is included which utilizes barge traffic data from rivers in Kentucky.