huangyhg

sidewalk live load
posted this on the bridge forum, but haven't gotten any responses. i thought i would try it here.
just curious how other engineers handle sidewalk live load on a typical i-grider bridge. seems to me that this could be handled a couple of different ways:
1. distribute live load evenly among all the beams with no reduction of load factors.
2. distribute the live load among exterior beam(s) and use the lower load factor allowed by aashto for the combined sidewalk/vehicular live load.
my question for method #2 is how many beams to distribute the sidewalk live load to. certainly more than just the exterior beam would carry sidewalk live load, especially since by code the sidewalk dead load can be distributed among all the beams.
i've always used method #1, but i was just curious what others have done. thanks.
i would use method 1 as well, but would like to see others opinions.
we read slower over in the bridge engineering forum.

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