Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Performance Enhancement Of Bridge Bracing Under Service And Extreme Loads, Peter Dusicka, Max Taylor Stephens, Kate Fox-Lent

TREC Final Reports

As truck loads continue to get bigger, the demand on many aging bridges increases. Slender steel structural elements widely used in bridge superstructures and braced substructures to resist these loads are built primarily for tension, however, and can buckle under compressive loads. Portland State University associate professor Peter Dusicka set out to develop and demonstrate the concept of retrofitting bridge brace elements with fiber reinforced composites in order to provide restraint against buckling. The advanced materials consisted of a combination of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite pultruded sections and wet lay-up wraps intended to be applied in the field. This …