FOREWORD

The first broadly recognized national standard for the design and construction of bridges in the United States was
published in 1931 by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), the predecessor to AASHTO. With
the advent of the automobile and the establishment of highway departments in all of the American states dating back to
just before the turn of the century, the design, construction, and maintenance of most U.S. bridges was the responsibility of
these departments and, more specifically, the chief bridge engineer within each department. It was natural, therefore, that
these engineers, acting collectively as the AASHTO Highway Subcommittee on Bridges and Structures, would become the
author and guardian of this first bridge standard.

This first publication was entitled Standard Specifications for Highway Bridges and Incidental Structures. It quickly
became the de facto national standard and, as such, was adopted and used by not only the state highway departments but
also other bridge-owning authorities and agencies in the United States and abroad. Rather early on, the last three words of
the original title were dropped and it has been reissued in consecutive editions at approximately four-year intervals ever
since as Standard Specifications for Highway Bridges, with the final 17th edition appearing in 2002.

The body of knowledge related to the design of highway bridges has grown enormously since 1931 and continues to
do so. Theory and practice have evolved greatly, reflecting advances through research in understanding the properties of
materials, in improved materials, in more rational and accurate analysis of structural behavior, in the advent of computers
and rapidly advancing computer technology, in the study of external events representing particular hazards to bridges such
as seismic events and stream scour, and in many other areas. The pace of advances in these areas has, if anything, stepped
up in recent years. To accommodate this growth in bridge engineering knowledge, the Subcommittee on Bridges and
Structures has been granted authority under AASHTO’s governing documents to approve and issue Bridge Interims each
year, not only with respect to the Standard Specifications but also to incrementally modify and enhance the twenty-odd
additional documents on bridges and structures engineering that are under its guidance and sponsorship.

In 1986, the Subcommittee submitted a request to the AASHTO Standing Committee on Research to undertake an
assessment of U.S. bridge design specifications, to review foreign design specifications and codes, to consider design
philosophies alternative to those underlying the Standard Specifications, and to render recommendations based on these
investigations. This work was accomplished under the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), an
applied research program directed by the AASHTO Standing Committee on Research and administered on behalf of
AASHTO by the Transportation Research Board (TRB). The work was completed in 1987, and, as might be expected with
a standard incrementally adjusted over the years, the Standard Specifications were judged to include discernible gaps,
inconsistencies, and even some conflicts. Beyond this, the specification did not reflect or incorporate the most recently
developing design philosophy, load-and-resistance factor design (LRFD), a philosophy which has been gaining ground in
other areas of structural engineering and in other parts of the world such as Canada and Europe.

From its inception until the early 1970s, the sole design philosophy embedded within the Standard Specifications was
one known as working stress design (WSD). WSD establishes allowable stresses as a fraction or percentage of a given
material’s load-carrying capacity, and requires that calculated design stresses not exceed those allowable stresses.
Beginning in the early 1970s, WSD began to be adjusted to reflect the variable predictability of certain load types, such as
vehicular loads and wind forces, through adjusting design factors, a design philosophy referred to as load factor design
(LFD). Both WSD and LFD are reflected in the current edition of the Standard Specifications.

A further philosophical extension results from considering the variability in the properties of structural elements, in
similar fashion to load variabilities. While considered to a limited extent in LFD, the design philosophy of load-and-
resistance factor design (LRFD) takes variability in the behavior of structural elements into account in an explicit manner.
LRFD relies on extensive use of statistical methods, but sets forth the results in a manner readily usable by bridge
designers and analysts.

With the advent of these specifications, bridge engineers had a choice of two standards to guide their designs, the
long-standing AASHTO Standard Specifications for Highway Bridges, and the alternative, newly adopted AASHTO LRFD
Bridge Design Specifications, and its companions, AASHTO LRFD Bridge Construction Specifications and AASHTO
LRFD Movable Highway Bridge Design Specifications. Subsequently, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and
the states have established a goal that LRFD standards be incorporated in all new bridge designs after 2007.

Interim Specifications are usually published in the middle of the calendar year, and a revised edition of this book is
generally published every four years. The Interim Specifications have the same status as AASHTO standards, but are
tentative revisions approved by at least two-thirds of the Subcommittee. These revisions are voted on by the AASHTO
member departments prior to the publication of each new edition of this book and, if approved by at least two-thirds of the

v
© 2007 by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
All rights reserved. Duplication is a violation of applicable law.