Structural Engineering Commons^™

Seamless Bridge And Roadway System For The U.S. Practice, Nima Ala

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Expansion joints are one of the main causes for high maintenance costs in bridges. The search for ideal expansion joints has proven fruitless. That is why it has been said that “the best joint is no joint”. A seamless bridge system is envisioned that results in bridges with long service lives by eliminating the joints over the entire length of the bridge, approach slab and a segment of the roadway called transition. All bridge thermal movements are dissipated to zero in the transition. The system is similar to a system developed in Australia but modifications had to be made to …

Extending Integral Concepts To Curved Bridge Systems, Saeed Eghtedar Doust

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The behavior of integral abutment systems and the extension of their application to curved bridges are investigated. First, the stresses in the elements of a typical integral abutment are studied by conducting nonlinear finite element analysis using the software package Abaqus. The results are design recommendations for the details of such abutments. The effect of integral abutments on the responses of bridges is also investigated. Steel and concrete bridge systems are studied separately.

The studied steel bridge systems are composed of composite I-girder superstructures and integral abutments supported on steel H-piles. A series of finite element studies for different bridge …

Experimental Investigation Of Folded Plate Girders And Slab Joints Used In Modular Construction, Kyle A. Burner

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The folded plate girder, a newly proposed bridge girder, is investigated through this thesis. The folded plate girder is cold bent out of a single sheet of steel. The cold bending eliminates the costly and inconsistent shop welds found in traditional girders. The folded plate girder is meant for application in short span bridges. The girder was subjected to an equivalent 75 year lifetime loading to investigate the fatigue performance.

The rebar detail used in the closure region between adjacent slabs has been investigated in the past by the NCHRP 12-68 project. This thesis will proposes a hooked rebar detail …

Constructability Testing Of Folded Plate Girders, Luke A. Glaser

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A new steel girder bridge system was developed at the University of Nebraska. The innovative girder design is a box girder folded from a single steel plate that has a trapezoid shape with an opening on the bottom. The girder has application in short span bridges and accelerated construction situations. The structural performance of the girder requires investigation in all stages of a bridge’s lifecycle. This thesis contains descriptions and results from the first two tests from a series of tests developed to evaluate this new girder shape. The objective of these two tests was to investigate the constructability of …

Studies Of Dynamic Crack Propagation And Crack Branching With Peridynamics, Youn Doh Ha, Florin Bobaru

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Faculty Publications

In this paper we discuss the peridynamic analysis of dynamic crack branching in brittle materials and show results of convergence studies under uniform grid refinement (m-convergence) and under decreasing the peridynamic horizon (δ-convergence). Comparisons with experimentally obtained values are made for the crack-tip propagation speed with three different peridynamic horizons.We also analyze the influence of the particular shape of themicro-modulus function and of different materials (Duran 50 glass and soda-lime glass) on the crack propagation behavior. We show that the peridynamic solution for this problem captures all the main features, observed experimentally, of dynamic crack propagation and branching, as well …

Wim Based Live Load Model For Bridge Reliability, Marek Kozikowski

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Development of a valid live load model is essential for assessment of serviceability and safety of highway bridges. The current HL-93 load model is based on the Ontario truck measurements performed in 1975. Since that time truck loads have changed significantly. Therefore, the goal of this study is to analyze 2005-2007 Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) data and develop a new statistical live load model.

The analyzed WIM data includes 47,000,000 records obtained from different states. A special program was developed to calculate the maximum live load effect. Comparison of the old and new truck data showed that on average Ontario trucks are …