Environmental Load Evaluation of Nipigon River Bridge

If current climate trends continue, climate change will be inevitable and designing infrastructure which can withstand changing environmental loads will be a concern. Furthermore, current infrastructure will be affected and may require retrofitting or rehabilitation in order to meet safety and code requirements. The scope of this report is to determine the effect of increased environmental load factor coefficients on Nipigon River Bridge. An FEA model was created and the results from the model show that the bridge is sensitive to changes in environmental loads, particularly those of wind and temperature. An increase of 10% in wind and temperature load coefficients was enough to change the governing load combination and surpass the estimated moment capacities.