Vehicle Properties

Owned by Becca Alford (Unlicensed)
Jun 19, 2020
3 min read

 

Vehicle Name

A text label used to identify the vehicle. Use only letters, numbers, and/or the underscore character (_) when entering a name, as this name will be used as the library file name.

 

Truck

Specify the various properties of the main vehicle load. As the values for the truck are adjusted a Profile View and Plan View of the truck will be updated. The Profile View shows the relative weights of each axle and the Plan View shows a footprint of the truck.

 

      Axles

Specify the number of axles, their weights, and spacings. Click the up and down arrow next to No. of Axles to increase or decrease respectively the number of axles. Changing the number of axles will adjust the number of rows in the Axle Weights and Axle Spacings grids. In the Axle Weights grid specify the weight for each axle.  To change the axle weight, click on the desired axle row in the grid. In the Axle Spacings grid specify the minimum and maximum spacing between each pair of adjacent axles.

 

Tire Contact Area

Input the length and width of the tire contact area. Width is defined as the direction parallel to the centerline of the axles and length as the direction perpendicular to the centerline of the axle.

 

Gage Width

Input the gage width, which is the distance between the centerlines of the wheels, as measured perpendicular to the centerline of the truck.  Note that the gage width is not used in AREMA.

 

Tandem

 

      Include Tandem

Check this box for the effects of the tandem load to be included in the design, which would normally be the case for the HL-93 (LRFD).

 

      Axle 1 Weight

      Input the weight of Axle 1.

 

      Axle 2 Weight

      Input the weight of Axle 2.

 

      Axle Spacing

      Input the spacing between Axle 1 and Axle 2.

 

Lane Load

 

      Uniform Load

Enter the magnitude of the uniformly-distributed load (line load) to be considered in the lane load portion of the analysis. The assigned lane load input will be divided by the lane width to convert this value to a ‘strip’ load.

 

      P-Moment

The point load used in conjunction with the uniform load for determining maximum effects. This value is not used for one cell box culverts.

 

      P-Shear

The point load used in conjunction with the uniform load for determining the highest shears.  This value is not used for one cell box culverts.

 

Combine

Choose how to combine the loads. The first option will combine the loads as Truck + Lane or Tandem + Lane, which is required by the LRFD Specification. The second option will apply the loads individually as Truck or Tandem or Lane, and is usually used for any design under the Standard Specification.

 

Save To Vehicle Library

Click this button to save the vehicle as defined in this dialog box to file to be used in the Vehicle Library. The Vehicle Library is placed by default in the user’s Documents folder. This path will be shown by default in the Save dialog so the vehicle can be saved to the user’s Vehicle Library folder.