• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.299-309
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• 2022

This paper presents a new class of the vehicular live load factor for a reliability-based bridge design code. The significance of the current vehicular live load factor of 1.8 is investigated based on the return period of the vehicular live load and the design life of a bridge. It is shown that the current vehicular live load factor corresponds to a return period of 6.7 million years for a 100-year design life, which seems to be unrealistic in an engineering sense, and that the target reliability of 3.72 is set to too high without any reasoning for the gravitational load-governed limit state compared with that of the other limit states. In case the same return period as the design wind velocity or the ground acceleration is employed for the vehicular live load, the corresponding vehicular live load factor becomes around 1.15, and the target reliability index for the return period may be selected as 2.0 or 2.5 depending on the governing load effect. The complete sets of the load-resistance factors for the proposed target reliability indices are evaluated through optimization.