Graduation Semester and Year
2022
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering
Department
Civil Engineering
First Advisor
Nur Dr. Yazdani
Abstract
Bridges play a crucial role in the worldwide transportation infrastructure. According to the 2021 America’s Infrastructure Report Card, there are more than 617,000 bridges across the Nation, of which, 42% are at least 50 years old, and 7.5% are rated as structurally deficient. Repetitive loading from heavy trucks is one of the reasons that could compromise the structural integrity of bridges. The heavy trucks have a negative impact on the bridge deck as a bridge’s first line of defense is to resist the applied load. The Las Lomas Bridge [Eastbound (EB) and Westbound (WB)] carrying IH-20 over Las Lomas Pkwy, which is located in Terrel, TX, experienced deck panel failure. The bridge includes a cast-in-place (CIP) concrete deck over precast concrete panels (PCPs), and four PCPs exhibited evidence of water staining and hairline cracks with efflorescence also in addition to minor alligator cracking in the bridge, which resulted in a localized deck failure. Typically, the PCPs and CIP deck act compositely to resist the traffic load. As the two bridges were built in 1987, their decks experienced several cracks. To accurately evaluate the bridge performance, field load tests and Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) were conducted. NDE is a useful tool to precisely predict the bridge deck current condition and involves using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Impact Echo (IE). From GPR data, the bridge deck scanning revealed that the deck top rebar cover differed from what was included in the as-built drawings. In addition, two bridge decks greatly suffered from severe delamination, which reduced the deck moment capacity. To assess the overall bridge performance in regards to composite action and load carrying capacity, a field load test was conducted by instrumenting the bridge with strain gage and rotational tiltmeter sensors. To conduct a more comprehensive study, a Finite Element Model (FEM) was prepared in ABAQUS. Since the EB and WB bridges demonstrated similar defect types, only one span of the EB bridge was considered during the FE preparation. The FE model was calibrated with field load test data to reflect the actual structure response. Various retrofitting options were carried out to investigate their effectiveness in increasing the bridge composite action and load carrying capacity.
Keywords
Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE), Load rating, Precast concrete panels (PCPs), Cast-in-place concrete deck (CIP), Ground Penetration Radar (GPR), Impact Echo (IE)
Disciplines
Civil and Environmental Engineering | Civil Engineering | Engineering
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Alateeq, Ahmed Abdullah, "PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND RETROFITTING OPTIONS OF A PRECAST PRESTRESSED CONCRETE BRIDGE WITH DECK PANEL FAILURE" (2022). Civil Engineering Dissertations. 477.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/civilengineering_dissertations/477
Comments
Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington