ANALYTICAL AND FIELD INVESTIGATION OF LATERAL LOAD DISTRIBUTION IN CONCRETE SLAB-ON-GIRDER BRIDGES. DISCUSSION AND CLOSURE

A discussion of an earlier paper with the aforementioned title by M. Shahawy and D. Huang, published in this journal (Volume 98, Number 4, July-August 2001), is presented. The original paper compared results of the authors' investigation of the live-load distribution in girder bridges with those found in AASHTO-LRFD specifications, concluding that the LRFD specifications are in error as they are more conservative than the authors' results. The discusser makes several comments relating to the authors' work, stating the need to include bridges without diaphragms in future research in order to make their findings consistent with the AASHTO-LRFD specifications. In closure, the authors respond to these comments and clarify their findings somewhat.