Estimating Bridge Surface Temperature with Meteorological and Location Data

Bridges are vital infrastructure elements facing a constant battle against environmental loads and those incurred by daily trafic. One of the most signiicant environmental effects on bridges is temperature luctuations. This research investigates current bridge temperature modeling techniques and develops a method to calculate surface temperatures using strictly open-source data with the agenda of increasing both awareness on the effect of temperature on bridges and expanding the knowledge ield through open-source tools. In particular, this paper aims to approach the problem of mapping surface temperature across different types of bridges in different locations under one general methodology, away from the FEA methods which provide great accuracy but have a scope limited to a single bridge in the most prominent research works on the matter. A comprehensive understanding of meteorological and environmental factors inluencing temperature variations on bridges will thus need to be established, with a particular focus on solar radiation. This is the reigning factor when it comes to computing surface temperature. Both the Perez model and Isotropic model of Liu and Jordan are combined into the methodology. The relative accuracies of these methods are superior to competing diffuse sky models, but the methodology not accounting for conduction skewed results in a negative direction.