FAHP model used for assessment of highway RC bridge structural and technological arrangements

Realisation of design issues concerning bridges requires addressing numerous complex structural, technological and architectural problems that need to be handled by a designer with extensive experience and intuition. This is a multi-criteria process, often hard to be clearly defined. It can be proven by a small number of scientific works devoted to the subject. Thus this article presents a new approach to selecting a structural-and-technological version for a highway RC bridge. The FAHP (Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process) multi-criteria comparative analysis method has been applied for these purposes. The assumed domestically predominant highway RC bridge structural-and-technological options have been analysed and optimised. For the evaluation purposes a group of criteria have been assumed, from a primary criteria set, by a superiority matrix, simultaneously taking into account the criteria hierarchy. From amongst numerous structural types, the most common ones have been recommended, i.e. slab girder bridge, slab-and-beam bridge, box girder bridge and arch one designs. The conclusions considering i.e. the possibility of application of the method by presentation of its advantages and possible limitations have been drawn on the basis of the obtained results analysis.