Abstract:
A recent Federal Highway study has shown that close to 18,000 bridge-vehicle collisions occurred between 2013-2018 in the United States. Texas DOT has estimated each overheight incident to cost an average of $180,000 for repair and it can take a bridge out of service for up to a year. This estimate doesn’t include inconvenience, detours, and congestion costs. Repair costs for severe damages may require replacement of the entire bridge. Hence, total economic damage because of bridge strike nationwide is in hundreds of millions of dollars. This research presents a performance-based approach for designing a bridge pier and superstructure of bridges based on extensive numerical simulations in LS-DYNA. This approach can be used to design bridge piers and superstructure to achieve desired performance level.
Dr. Agrawal is a distinguished (less than 1% of members) member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and past Chief Editor of the ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering. He is the past chair of ASCE SEI Committee on Bridge Inspection, Rehabilitation and Monitoring and Committee on Structural Control and Sensing. His research interests include inspection and deterioration of bridge elements, robotic inspection of bridge components, post-hazard assessment using drones, behavior of bridges during extreme hazards such as earthquakes, blast, fire, and vehicular impacts on highway bridges. He is recipient of several prestigious awards, including Richard R. Torrens Award for outstanding performance as editor of the ASCE Journal of Bridge Engineering, Arthur M. Wellington Prize for the paper, “Heavy Truck Collision with Bridge Piers: Computational Simulation Study,” Metropolitan Section Civil Engineer of the Year and ASCE Raymond C. Reese Research Prize in 2023. He has published more than 132 peer reviewed papers, 26 major reports and more than 200 conference papers. Dr. Agrawal received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 1997 from the University of California,
Irvine, M.Eng. from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Kanpur, India.
