Structural Design, Construction, and Evaluation of a Prestressed Concrete Bridge Using Ultra High Performance Concrete Pi Girders

Project Details
STATUS

Completed

START DATE

05/01/07

END DATE

11/30/10

FOCUS AREAS

Infrastructure

RESEARCH CENTERS BEC
SPONSORS

Buchanan County, Iowa
Innovative Bridge Research and Construction
Iowa Department of Transportation
Iowa Highway Research Board

Researchers
Principal Investigator
Fouad S. Fanous
Principal Investigator
Terry Wipf
Principal Investigator
Brent Phares

Bridge Research Engineer, BEC

Principal Investigator
Curtis Monk
Principal Investigator
Brian Keierleber
Principal Investigator
Dean Bierwagen

About the research

The team proposes to design and construct the first bridge in the United States to use a novel concrete mix referred to as ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) in an optimized shape referred to as a Pi girder (i.e., a double tee cross section). Due to the serviceability issues that were identified early on in the conduct of a previous project using UHPC, a modification of the optimized Pi shape will be utilized, but the general cross section shape will be retained. This project will develop and build on experience in Iowa in the design and construction of bridges using advanced materials. To accomplish this, the team proposes to complete the design using only Iowa-based engineers working at various levels (state, local, academia) and, where possible, to use local companies for the construction of the bridge (note: fabrication of the Pi shape girder will likely be done out of state due to specialty formwork issues). The team will also test a reduced-scale beam specimen in the laboratory and test the completed field bridge.

TOP