A novel procedure is proposed in this paper to investigate the capacity of parking structures to resist additional live loads that could come from many cars, potentially from heavier or driverless cars. In recent decades, the typical operating weight of passenger vehicles has risen significantly. The anticipated widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), which contain heavy battery systems, may further increase live load demands. As a result, a new robust procedure is needed to assess the live load effects on parking structures. Hence, using the proposed innovative approach based on 3D influence surfaces, tributary areas (AT) and three-dimensional influence surfaces (AI) were calculated (for the first time) to examine the equivalent uniformly distributed load corresponding to selected column axial loads and beam midspan moments that are expected to be experienced during the lifetime of parking structures. As case studies, the responses of two existing multistory parking garages on the Ohio State University campus were investigated under different arrangements of two car types—standard cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs)—and the calculated maximum live loads were compared with the current code requirements. The results show that the maximum live load for the midspan moment is conservative; however, the maximum axial column loading in the extreme scenarios presented in this paper can be larger than the specified (original) design limit of the selected parking garages. The novel methodology proposed in this paper is based on 3D influence line analysis and can be applied for any vehicle configuration and weight, and different parking arrangements or loading scenarios to investigate the performance of parking garages.
Ismaeel et al. (2026) studied this question.