Prestressed concrete bridges currently account for 45% of bridges built in the last 5 years in the United States. This has resulted in an increase in the number of deficient bridges composed of prestressed concrete, which requires a better understanding of the on-site performance of this building material. The use of new materials, such as high-performance concrete, in conjunction with prestres...

16. Abstract Two prestressed high performance concrete (HPC) highway bridges were constructed in Texas utilizing concrete with 56 day design strengths of up to 97 MPa (14,000 psi). The utilization of HPC allowed for longer spans and larger girder spacing than typically used in conventional prestressed concrete bridges. An extensive research program was conducted to monitor the shortand long-ter...

The Beddington Trail/Centre Street, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is the first prestressed concrete highway bridge built in Canada pretensioned by Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic, FRP, tendons. It is also the first bridge which has utilized a structurally integrated optical sensors system to monitor the behaviour. The bridge is completed and was opened to traffic on November 5, 1993. The project in...

A practical Bridge Management System has been developed by the author, which is referred to as the Japanese Bridge Management System (J-BMS) for existing concrete bridges. This paper introduces a newly developed bridge management system for the prestressed concrete (PC) bridges (J-BMS PC version) which is integrated with the PC bridge rating expert system (PC-BREX). The proposed system is able ...

The monitoring of a precast, prestressed girder bridge during fabrication and service provided the opportunity to observe temperature variations and to evaluate the accuracy of calculated strains and cambers. The use of high curing temperatures during fabrication affects the level of prestress because the strand length is fixed during the heating, the coefficients of thermal expansion of steel ...

In this paper, the bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) method is used to find optimal layouts of 3D prestressed concrete beams. Considering the element sensitivity number as the design variable, the mathematical formulation of topology optimization is developed based on the ABAQUS finite element software package. The surface-to-surface contact with a small sliding between...

The use of heavier trucks demanded upgrading of a twenty-seven year old bridge in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Analysis of the precast prestressed concrete girders using the current AASHTO Code indicates a deficiency in the shear capacity. Shear strengthening using Carbon Fibre R_einforced Polymer (CFRP) sheets provides a low-cost solution by increasing the speed of construction and reducing tra...

The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to characterize the bridge material selection decisions of highway officials across the United States. Understanding product choices by utilizing the AHP allowed us to develop strategies for increasing the use of timber in bridge construction. State Department of Transportation engineers, private consulting engineers, and local highway officials w...