United States Department of Transportation
ROSA P serves as an archival repository of USDOT-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by USDOT or funded partners.
As a repository, ROSA P retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
i
Evaluating Louisiana New Continuity Detail for Girder Bridges
-
2020-12-01
[PDF-29.89 MB]
Details:
-
Creators:
-
Corporate Creators:
-
Corporate Contributors:
-
Subject/TRT Terms:
-
Publication/ Report Number:
-
Resource Type:
-
Geographical Coverage:
-
Edition:04/2014 – 08/2019
-
Corporate Publisher:
-
Abstract:This report summarizes results from an investigation of the behavior of link slabs as a means for achieving partial bridge continuity. Data collected over a period of three years from a structural health monitoring system installed in the Ouachita River Bridge was used to study link slab behavior. Multiple spans with various continuity details and support conditions were instrumented to investigate link slab performance. Recorded data from the sensors was used to analyze and interpret various aspects of bridge behavior with special emphasis on link slabs. Girder end displacements, girder end rotations, crack widths in the link slab, as well as forces in the link slab were investigated. It was found that temperature gradient has a direct effect on link slab performance. The effects of temperature gradient were also dependent on support and continuity conditions of the segments employing the 2 link slab. The adopted crack control detail was not found to be effective in arresting transverse deck cracking. Furthermore, greater support restraint was found to lead to greater stresses in the link slab, and hence result in higher forces and wider transverse deck cracks in the link slab. Shorter continuous segments were found to experience wider transverse cracks in the link slabs, as well as higher tension forces. The performance of the instrumented link slabs was found to be acceptable for construction of jointless bridge deck. Furthermore, it can be said that the performance of bridges employing link slabs is superior to fully continuous bridge spans, which has been shown to lead to higher stress concentrations at girder ends as was observed for the Audubon Bridge (see LTRC Projects 08-1ST and 12-1ST). Therefore, it is recommended that the link slab detail without the crack control detail be adopted as the standard detail for bridge connections to reduce the need for expansion joints.
-
Format:
-
Collection(s):
-
Main Document Checksum:
-
Download URL:
-
File Type:
