Engineering Commons^™

Hillman Composite Beam (Hcb®), Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The Hillman-Composite Beam (HCB®), is an innovative structural member for use in highway and railroad bridges as well as marine facilities. The HCB is essentially a lightweight reinforced concrete beam strengthened and protected by a corrosion-resistant and resilient Fiberglass Reinforced Polymer (FRP) shell.

The beam is comprised of three main components, a concrete arch (compression reinforcement), an FRP bottom flange encapsulating steel strands tying the ends of the arch together (tension reinforcement) and the FRP shell. Galvanized Rebar “shear connectors” are used to make the beam composite with the concrete deck in the same manner as pre-stressed concrete beams.

The …

Bridge Lock-Up Device System, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

The Colebrand Lock-up Device (LUD) provides additional substructure strength to resist seismic forces as a structural shock transmission unit for highway bridges. This system can provide a temporary rigid link between bridge structural members under seismic, braking, or other fast-acting type loads, while permitting slow thermal movements.

Fiber Optic Sensor : Monitoring Precast Beams, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets

A new bridge over the Rio Puerco river, west of Albuquerque will be the first of its kind in the nation with built-in fiber-optic sensors to monitor stress in the bridge's girders. Known as "smart bridge" technology, the self-monitoring system offers many advantages over methods that rely largely on visual inspections.