Engineering Commons^™

Bridge Design For Earthquake Fault Crossings: Synthesis Of Design Issues And Strategies, Rakesh K. Goel, Bing Qu, Osmar Rodriguez, Jennifer Tures

Rakesh K. Goel

As shown by the bridge damages observed from recent earthquakes, the bridges crossing earthquake faults can be more vulnerable compared with those lying on one side of the earthquake faults. Avoiding building bridges across earthquake fault zones might be the best design strategy; however, it is not always possible to do so in regions of high seismicity such as California. While rigorous nonlinear response history analysis (RHA) using the spatially-varying ground motions generated based on site-specific seismological studies can be conducted for bridges crossing fault ruptures; such a design and analysis process is too onerous, making it less practical for …

Fluorescing Coatings For Improved Inspection During Bridge Maintenance Painting, Bobby W. Meade, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Sudhir Palle

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Optically active pigments (OAPs) fluoresce under light exposures with wavelengths (nm) producing emissions in the visible spectra (380 to 740 nm). They are used as paint pigments to aid visual inspection of applied coatings for defects such as pin-holing and incomplete coverage. OAP coatings are widely used in various industries outside of bridge maintenance painting.

This study addressed the laboratory evaluation and field trial of an OAP coating for KYTC bridges. OAP coatings were evaluated for inspectability and accelerated weathering performance in a laboratory test program. After successful laboratory performance, OAP coatings were specified for a KYTC bridge painting project …

New Coatings For Bridges (Over-Coat Systems), Sudhir Palle, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Bobby W. Meade

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

KYTC sought to identify new coatings technologies consistent with overcoating that offer enhancements in terms of ease of application and performance. KYTC contacted paint manufacturers to obtain sample coating systems for characterization by the KYTC Division of Materials and accelerated performance testing by Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC). A total of 14 coating systems from five manufacturers underwent performance testing according to ASTM D5894.

Probabilistic Analysis Of Indeterminate Highway Bridges Considering Material Nonlinearity, Liam Mccarthy

Masters

With ever-reducing maintenance budgets and ever-deteriorating bridge infrastructure, th assessment of existing bridges is vital. Reliability analysis techniques are becomin increasingly popular in the structural safety assessment of existing bridge structures Commonly, a component based approach is used in reliability analysis techniques Traditional reliability procedures often employ a conservative definition of failure, in that th component is deemed to have failed when the strength capacity has been exceeded at a singl cross section. As a result, the component's degree of redundancy and ductility is ignored giving an often conservative estimate of the load carrying capacity of the bridge component Therefore, …

Efficient Prestressed Concrete-Steel Composite Girder For Medium-Span Bridges, Yaohua Deng

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this dissertation, a new Prestressed Concrete-Steel Composite (PCSC) girder system is introduced. The PCSC girder is composed of a lightweight W-shape steel section with shear studs on its top and bottom flanges to achieve composite action with the pretensioned concrete bottom flange and the cast-in-place concrete deck. The PCSC girder is lightweight, economical, durable and easy to fabricate. To prove its feasibility and potential, this study is to investigate design and fabrication issues associated with the PCSC girder. A service design procedure is proposed using Age-adjusted Elasticity Modulus Method (AEMM) to evaluate the time-dependent stresses and strains in the …

Developing A Family Of Curves For The Hec-18 Scour Equation, Timothy Calappi, Carol J. Miller, Donald Carpenter, Travis Dahl

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

Accurate pier scour predictions are essential to the safe and efficient design of bridge crossings. Current practice uses empirical formulas largely derived from laboratory experiments to predict local scour depth around single-bridge piers. The resulting formulas are hindered by insufficient consideration of scaling effects and hydrodynamic forces. When applied to full-scale designs, these formula deficiencies lead to excessive over prediction of scour depths and increased construction costs. In an effort to improve the predictive capabilities of the HEC-18 scour model, this work uses field-scale data and nonlinear regression to develop a family of equations optimized for various non-cohesive soil conditions. …

Temperature Effects On Integral Abutment Bridges For The Long-Term Bridge Performance Program, Leo E. Rodriguez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) program was started by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 2009 to gather high-quality data on a collection of typical bridges over a twenty-year period of time. The goal of this program is to create databases of high quality data acquired through long-term instrumentation of the bridges behavior during their service life.

The data gathered will be used to improve design practices and effective management of infrastructures. As part of the LTBP Program two integral abutment bridges, a California Bridge near Sacramento, CA and a Utah Bridge near Perry, UT, were selected to be monitored …

Advanced Sensing For Detection Of Hidden Defects In Concrete Structures, Sara Wadia-Fascetti

Sara J. Wadia-Fascetti

No abstract provided.

Enhancement Factors For The Vertical Response Of Footbridges Subjected To Stochastic Crowd Loading, Colin Caprani, Joe Keogh, Paul Archbold, Paul Fanning

Articles

The vertical acceleration response of a hypothetical footbridge is predicted for a sample of single pedestrians and a crowd of pedestrians using a probabilistic approach. This approach uses statistical distributions to account for the fact that pedestrian parameters are not identical for all pedestrians. Enhancement factors are proposed for predicting the response due to a crowd based on the predicted accelerations of a single pedestrian. The significant contribution of this work is the generation of response curves identifying enhancement factors for a range of crowd densities and synchronization levels.

Resilience Of Bridges Following Aftershocks, Diego Francisco Espinosa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The ability to predict the reduction in capacity of a structure after an earthquake is vital in the process of assessing a structure after a main-shock or an after-shock. Main-shocks are normally followed by a few aftershocks in a short period of time. Researchers in the past have focused for the most part on the effects of main-shocks on buildings. Very little research has been performed on the ability to predict the reduction in capacity of bridges in aftershocks. This thesis focuses on providing a way of assessing the reduction in capacity for main-shocks as compared to aftershocks and the …