Multilevel structural analysis for robustness assessment of a steel truss bridge

In practical application of statically determinate trusses to bridge design, there will be some redundancy because of continuity at connections. In the current open debate about robustness and collapse-resistant design the effect of such redundancy becomes important and in the present paper is taken into account by a multilevel analysis going from the global to the local. This is illustrated by application to the truss portion of the recently collapsed I-35W Minneapolis Bridge which has redundant reactions but is a functionally non redundant structure.