Case-based reasoning in steel bridge engineering

The current inventory of the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) contains about 12000 bridges. The great majority of the bridges rated by ODOT engineers are based on the working stress design (WSD) method. The new Federal Highway Administration guidelines require that all bridge ratings be done using the load factor design (LFD) method. Consequently, thousands of bridges have to be re-rated according to the LFD code. The WSD-based data files for existing bridges do not contain the detailed information about steel sections and cross frames needed for the LFD-based rating. In this research a case-based reasoning (CBR) system has been developed to assist the bridge engineer in converting the WSD-based ratings for existing bridges to new LFD-based ratings. A domain model has been created to represent the ODOT standard design cases of bridges.