# Impact of Road Traffic Tendency in Europe on Fatigue Assessment of Bridges
## 2 Real Traffic Measurements
### The Moerdijk (NL) Traffic  
As already remarked, the introduction of LHVs besides giving new prospects for traffic management, could also overcharge the bridges, causing a disproportionate increase of costs.  
In the Netherlands, wide campaigns of in situ measurements concerning typical LHV traffics are in progress.  
As anticipated, for the aim of the present paper, the measurements carried out in the first week of April 2007 in Moerdijk (NL), on the Breda-Rotterdam motorway, have been considered [22]. These  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c c} \hline  & **Daily Flow** & **Q\({}_{\text{mean}}\)[kN]** & \(\sigma\) [kN]** & **Q\({}_{\text{max}}\)[kN]** \\ \hline Brohltal (DE) & 19,970 & 59.0 & 28.4 & 165.0 \\ \hline Garonor (FR) 1982 & 8470 & 57.6 & 27.6 & 180.0 \\ \hline Garonor (FR) 1984 & 11,593 & 59.3 & 30.0 & 195.0 \\ \hline Auxerre (FR) (slow lane) & 10,442 & 82.5 & 35.2 & 195.0 \\ \hline Auxerre (FR) (fast lane) & 581 & 73.1 & 41.2 & 200.0 \\ \hline [PERSON]. (IT) & \(\sim\)15,000 & 56.8 & 32.9 & 192.0\({}^{1}\) \\ \hline Piacenza (IT) & \(\sim\)20,000 & 61.8 & 31.0 & 185.0\({}^{1}\) \\ \hline Sasso Marconi (IT) & \(\sim\)13,000 & 61.9 & 30.8 & 185.0\({}^{1}\) \\ \hline \end{tabular} \({}^{1}\) Extrapolated values.  
\end{table}
Table 1: Daily flow of single axles and statistical parameters of axle loads.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c c} \hline  & **Daily Flow** & **Q\({}_{\text{tot,mean}}\)[kN]** & \(\sigma\) [kN]** & **Q\({}_{\text{tot,max}}\)[kN]** \\ \hline Brohltal (DE) & 4793 & 245.8 & 127.3 & 650.0 \\ \hline Garonor (FR) 1982 & 2570 & 189.8 & 107.5 & 550.0 \\ \hline Garonor (FR) 1984 & 3686 & 186.5 & 118.0 & 560.0 \\ \hline Auxerre (FR) (slow lane) & 2630 & 326.7 & 144.9 & 630.0 \\ \hline Auxerre (FR) (fast lane) & 153 & 277.2 & 163.6 & 670.0 \\ \hline [PERSON]. (IT) & \(\sim\)4000 & 204.5 & 130.3 & 590.0 \\ \hline Piacenza (IT) & \(\sim\)5000 & 235.2 & 140.0 & 630.0 \\ \hline Sasso Marconi (IT) & \(\sim\)3500 & 224.9 & 149.0 & 620.0 \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 2: Daily flow of lorries and statistical parameters of total loads.  
measurements, concerning typical Dutch LHV traffic, characterized by a flow of about 8100 lorries per day on the slow lane, were carried out in the framework of studies regarding the assessment of equivalent fatigue loads for bridge decks.  
In [20] commercial lorries in Moerdijk traffic have been classified in the 53 relevant subclasses illustrated in Figure 1.  
These subclasses are characterized by a number of axles varying between two and nine, but records contain also lorries with up to 13 axles. The maximum recorded lorry load resulted in being about 1140 kN, pertaining to a 10-axle lorry type O13411, 19.5 m long.  
Since the reliability of measurements is not granted when the vehicle speed \(v\) is too high, vehicles characterized by \(v>33\)m/s have been disregarded. Subsequently, physical coherence of measured data have been checked, eliminating lorries characterized, for example, by unrealistic values of the first axle load, not compatible with the steering function of the first axle, or by excessive inter-axle distance; or by excessive length.  
Figure 1: Lorry subclasses and symbols for Moerdijk traffic (adapted from [20]).  
Referring to two-axle lorries, some examples of clearly unrealistic recorded data are summarized in Table 3.  
Disregarding these very extreme data, the maximum recorded tandem axle load was about 292 kN, pertaining to the tandem axle of the trailer of a T12O3 lorry, whose total weight was 636 kN, while the maximum equivalent uniformly distributed load was about 63 kN/m, pertaining to a T12O21 lorry weighing 813 kN in total.