In 2007, the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) will adopt the Load and Resistance Factored Design (LRFD) Bridge Design Specifications as the mandatory standard by which all future bridge structures will be designed. New Jersey has committed itself to the adoption of the LRFD Specifications on January 2000. The LRFD Specifications consider and ascertain the variability in the behavior of structural elements through extensive statistical analyses and, therefore, continue to be refined and improved. However, many of the Specifications’ design approaches and methodologies have been adopted with limited or virtually no experimental validation. Therefore, there is a need to validate these new design procedures and models as well as the integrity of LRFD designed bridge structures.

The Doremus Avenue Bridge, located in Newark, NJ, is New Jersey’s initial LRFD design. The construction project will involve replacement of an existing bridge structure that primarily carries truck traffic into the State’s seaport. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the analytical behavior of the Doremus Avenue Bridge and to identify the instrumentation procedure(s) and equipment to be used in the field testing and monitoring program. The identification process is implemented in two phases: 1) development of a detailed Finite Element Model (FEM) and 2) the planning and optimization of instrumentation schemes and the sensor location. The aim is to enable the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) to successfully select the appropriate instrumentation modifications.