Behavior of a Truss Bridge after the Collapse of a Member

Partial collapse of a bridge may or may not lead to further damage or even to the collapse of the entire bridge. The difference arises from the redundancy of the bridge, and this issue attracts many researchers and engineers in recent years. The present study also deals with it. To be specific, the behavior of a truss bridge after the collapse of a member is studied. For the investigation of redundancy, simple analysis is preferred since a number of analyses are required in general. However, the present study reveals that standard static analysis yields result quite different from that due to dynamic analysis. An analysis method is then proposed. Although much computational time is not required, example problem confirms the effectiveness of the proposed method.