Vehicle Safety Assessment on Bridge Deck under Cross wind

Vehicle accidents on a bridge deck under cross wind have been reported in the past decades. This is one of bridge design issues, especially for sea-crossing bridges. Prior to determining any measure such as the use of windscreen, the safety of running vehicle should be assessed with a systematic procedure.

The purpose of this study is developing an assessment procedure of vehicle safety under cross wind with consideration of the wind direction, the shape of bridge deck, and the type of vehicle. The stochastic approach is applied for the long-term wind data. The procedure consists of three steps: 1) estimation of cumulative distribution function of wind data, 2) estimation of critical wind speeds, and 3) estimation of the number of days for traffic control. The proposed procedure is applied to an example bridge and several factors affecting the vehicle safety are discussed.