The Veterans' Glass City Skyway (VGCS) is a cable-stayed bridge. It replaced an old drawbridge that carried I-280 over the Maumee River. The VGCS was designed by the FIGG Engineering Group. The structure is a prestressed, post-tensioned segmental concrete cable stay bridge with a total length of 8800 feet. The bridge carries three traffic lanes of each bound and the surface of the road above the river reaches to 130 feet (40 m). This cable-stayed type bridge is a 1,225-feet cable stay span with a single plane of stay and a single pylon. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) contracted the University Research Team (URT) composed of faculty and students from the University of Toledo and the University of Cincinnati to instrument the main span of the VGCS throughout construction and service life.
VGCS began construction in the spring of 2001 and was opened to traffic on June 24, 2007. 128 strain gages were installed in four segments which were selected to be instrumented when the segments were cast. These health monitoring gages can measure the value of strain and temperature at each section and data from the strain gages can be collected by a data acquisition system. This thesis is focus on the long-term behavior of VGCS during construction and service life. Experimental stresses derived from the strain data will be compared with analytical stresses at each instrumented segment. Following the AASHTO Bridge Evaluation Manual, the experimental inventory load rating will be calculated and compared with the analytical load rating.
The purpose of this research is to establish the baseline for evaluating the structural health of VGCS by experimental load rating and the initial assessment of long-term stresses. Overall, comparison between experimental stress time history line and analytical stress time history line verify the behavior of VGCS performed as expect for a long-term monitoring. And inventory load rating for concrete describes the structure health of VGCS is in a good state.