Abstract
Very often there are two or more trucks present on the highway bridge, and the effect of their interaction on total fatigue damage to a bridge detail occurs in a non-linear fashion. This interaction-effect in a single-lane loading has been studied in terms of “multiple presence fatigue factor”, γM. Explicit analytical expressions have been obtained for γM using renewal point process load with equal magnitude. Distribution of the headway distance between successive trucks has been found to have a significant effect on this factor. For normal traffic conditions, it has been found that the interaction effect in a single-lane loading is not so significant, and can be neglected for the practical design purposes.
