Shear behavior of high performance concrete bridge girders
Description
Three 96-ft (29.3-m) long, 72-in. (1.83-m) deep, pretensioned bulb-tee girders were tested to evaluate behavior under static shear loadings. The three girders had a design concrete compressive strength of 10,000 psi (69.0 MPa) and incorporated 0.6-in. (15.2-mm) diameter, Grade 270, low relaxation prestressing strands. In order to evaluate performance for an upcoming bridge project of the Louisiana (USA) Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD), one of the girders was designed based on the AASHTO Standard Specifications for Highway Bridges and the other two were designed based on the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications. The shear reinforcement designs of one end of the AASHTO designed girder and one of the two LRFD designed girders incorporated the use of welded wire fabric as an alternative to conventional bars for shear reinforcement After a fatigue loading test, each girder was cut in half and both ends were tested to evaluate static shear strength performance. The objective of this dissertation is to utilize the results of tests on six full-size high performance concrete (HPC) bulb-tee bridge girder specimens, tested in static shear, in analytical studies designed to determine the applicability of U.S. guidelines and specifications to HPC bridge girders, and to examine data collected relative to the shear behavior and strength in an attempt to define parameters that could be used in the design process