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Prestressed Steel Girders for Two Span Bridges

Campbell, Tara
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447690927

Abstract Details

2015, MS, University of Cincinnati, Engineering and Applied Science: Civil Engineering.
This thesis will examine the potential economic benefits of using prestressed steel girders in the design of two span bridges. Past research has proposed that using prestressed steel has the potential to produce bridges with more efficient and economical designs. In this work, physical design examples will be used to determine the validity of past research work. Standard steel girder designs for three span lengths were produced using the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specification, 6th edition. Additionally, prestressed steel girder designs were produced with attention paid to finding the most effective placement of the prestressing strands. Comparison of the standard and prestressed steel girder designs shows that the prestressed steel resulted in an average material savings of roughly 15%-20%. Cost estimations find that although material savings of 15%-20% were seen, this raw material savings did not correspond to a financial savings for the entire project. The cost of the prestressed designs versus the standard girder designs were higher by anywhere from 5%-22% depending on the span and strand profiles. As the span length increased, the increase in cost for the prestressed girder designs was also increased. Overall in the cases examined in this work, the raw material savings did not outweigh the additional costs associated with the prestressed steel. A rehabilitation design was also completed to investigate the potential of using post tensioning steel to renovate existing bridges. Again, past research suggests that prestressing steel is a good option for rehabilitating bridges, but very few design examples exist. For this work a theoretical renovation design was produced. The post-tensioning steel was used to raise the load rating of an existing bridge design based on the Ohio Department of Transportation’s standard bridge drawing CSB-3-63. Post-tensioning was designed to bring the load rating of the existing bridge design with a load frequency of 400 up to meet HL-93 loading requirements. This design was unsuccessful due to excessive stresses felt by the existing bridge beams. Post-tensioning was then designed to bring the load rating up to ODOT’s rehabilitated bridge requirement of HS-20 loading. This design was successful, which provides an example of how an existing bridge can be rehabilitated to increase the load rating to meet current standards. The design examples completed for this research show that prestressing steel can be utilized for new bridges as well as renovation of existing bridges. The prestressing steel designs for the new bridges resulted in raw material savings, but failed to produce overall financial savings. Additionally the rehab using the post-tensioning steel was successful in raising the load rating of the existing bridge from a load frequency of 400 to an HS-20 load rating. The rehabilitated design was unsuccessful in raising the load rating to an HL-93 load rating however.
James Swanson, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Mike Zwick, P.E. (Committee Member)
Gian Rassati, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
297 p.
Engineering
prestress; steel; post-tension

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Campbell, T. (2015). Prestressed Steel Girders for Two Span Bridges [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447690927

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Campbell, Tara. Prestressed Steel Girders for Two Span Bridges. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447690927.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Campbell, Tara. "Prestressed Steel Girders for Two Span Bridges." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1447690927

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1447690927
2,197
© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Prestressed Steel Girders for Two Span Bridges by Tara Campbell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.