The trend in many countries is to outsource maintenance with competitive tendering. The design of the tender is then a crucial issue. A new type of tendering contract, called "Integrated Bridge Maintenance", was introduced in one experimental area in Sweden. In this case the preventive bridge maintenance is separated from the standard road maintenance contract. The ideas behind these changes are that the new approach can increase efficiency through a combination of in­creased specialization, economies of scale and through giving the private contractor a greater degree of freedom concerning exactly what to do and exactly when to do it. A pilot project has been running since 2004 for all bridges in Uppsala County with about 400 bridges and since 2007 for all bridges in Örebro County with about 700 bridges.   The experiences and lessons from this pilot project are presented in this thesis together with guidelines on how to procure Integrated Bridge Maintenance in the future. An important feature of the contract was that it contained a combination of specific measures that the contractor should carry out and properties of the bridges that the contractor was responsible to maintain. This created a balance between predictability and flexibility for the contractor. The contractor could make long term planning for the work. The client was satisfied because of increased com­petence and a low price. The latter can partly be explained by the possibility for the specialised bridge crew to receive additional work from other clients. As information about old bridges always is incomplete a partnering structure needs to be built into the contract. Experi­ence has also shown that a conscious policy to maintain long run competition is important. The general conclusion is that the project was seen as successful and as creating more "value for money".   To manage a bridge stock optimally from a life cycle perspective is a very complex task, since the condi­tions for the individual bridge can vary greatly from place to place which the answers from the research questions indicate. Besides following-up and evaluating the Integrated Bridge Maintenance projects a number of research questions have been studied.   Is Integrated Bridge Maintenance a successful method to increase the effectiveness and to increase the standard in bridge maintenance alternatively increasing the service life for the bridge stock at an optimal cost, i.e., will IBM lead to lower LCC? It is difficult to answer this question with exact numbers after so short time, but so far the opinion is that the effectiveness has increased. How can a bridge stock develop over a long time e.g. 15 years? Based on historical data one can calculate, for instance, new construction rate, demolition rate and average age for the bridge stock. This information could together with different future scenarios be a basis for different bridge management strategies for the actual bridge stock. What is the real service life for a bridge? Survival analysis for the different types of bridges in the actual bridge stock will give a good estimate of the different expected service life. Why and at which age are bridges de­molished? Two main reasons were found in this study: deterioration process of the bridge had gone too far and/or load bearing capacity was too low, and road were rerouted. What is the real service life for a bridge edge beam, one of the most often repaired element of Swedish bridges? Survival analysis of edge beams located on different types of roads will give a good estimate of the different expected service life.   How should a long-term contract for bridge maintenance and specially Integrated Bridge Maintenance be procured? The bridge manager should have a good understanding of the answers on the research ques­tions above when the tender documents are to be prepared for the actual bridge stock. Thereafter the area that the contract should cover could be chosen, a good balance between properties and measures, defining the working cycle for properties, a flexible partnering structure in the contract and a suitable length of the contract (x years) inclusive an option (+ y years) and finally good incentives in the contract.   To sum up, the main purpose with the doctoral project has been reached. A model for procurement of bridge maintenance has been developed; see the projects in Uppsala and Örebro. The contractor has deve­loped more effective methods for bridge maintenance. The doctoral project has been a step closer to the end goal of reducing the society’s costs for bridge maintenance in the future. The bridges should be func­tional to the lowest possible cost during its expected service life (LCC). The doctoral project has also con­tributed with new knowledge in the area of bridge maintenance, the actual development of a bridge stock over time, real service life for road bridges in Sweden and survival analysis. / QC 20100826

The steel through-truss Traffic Bridge, located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is over one hundred years old. The bridge has been subject to ongoing maintenance throughout its service life. However, inspection reports from 2005 and 2006 highlighted the severe deterioration experienced primarily by the steel members immediately above and below the deck surface. These reports prompted the City of Saskatoon (COS) to implement a rehabilitation project that involved the installation of a post-tensioning system to relieve the badly corroded bottom chord members of the axial loads due to the self-weight of the structure, in 2006. Due to the severe deterioration and the structural modifications that the Traffic Bridge has endured, a limited scope structural health monitoring (SHM) system, based on strain measurements, was implemented to reduce some of the uncertainty regarding the active load paths occurring at the deck level. The objectives of the SHM study were to obtain more information regarding the actual load paths and ascertain possible types of structural redundancy, to determine how to best model this type of structure, and to find ways to track ongoing deterioration using instrumentation. The SHM study involved controlled truck loading scenarios to permit measurement of the load paths and provide data to compare the measured results to a finite element (FE) model of the instrumented span. In addition, random loading scenarios were used to capture the vertical dynamic response of the structure in order to further refine the FE model. This study focused on the response of one-half of one interior span. A total of 72 strain gauges were installed. The downstream truss was highly instrumented at ten locations, three members of the upstream truss were instrumented to measure the distribution, and the floor joists in the downstream lane were instrumented to establish possible redundancy paths. Using an FE model in combination with the measured strain data, it was found that redundant load paths only existed at the level of the deck. The bottom chord members experienced non-zero strains once the control vehicle was past the span, possibly indicating some level of redundancy. The members believed to relieve a portion of the bottom chord tensile forces included the car joists, edge joists, and the timber deck. The amount of force transferred from the bottom chord to the deck members was found by FE analysis to be highly related to the lateral stiffness of the floor beams. The FE model was adjusted to match the measured results by modifying various modelling parameters. The most important features of the model were that all deck elements were modelled to be located at the elevation of the bottom chord, that the lateral stiffness of the floor beams was reduced by 50% to best represent the transfer of forces to deck elements, and that the stiffness of bottom chord members was reduced to 80% of their pristine values. In combination with calibrated modification factors applied to the measured values, this FE model is believed to be a useful tool to represent the behaviour of the structure to assist in detecting further damage by modelling the strain differential between members, and components of members.

The steel through-truss Traffic Bridge, located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is over one hundred years old. The bridge has been subject to ongoing maintenance throughout its service life. However, inspection reports from 2005 and 2006 highlighted the severe deterioration experienced primarily by the steel members immediately above and below the deck surface. These reports prompted the City of Saskatoon (COS) to implement a rehabilitation project that involved the installation of a post-tensioning system to relieve the badly corroded bottom chord members of the axial loads due to the self-weight of the structure, in 2006. Due to the severe deterioration and the structural modifications that the Traffic Bridge has endured, a limited scope structural health monitoring (SHM) system, based on strain measurements, was implemented to reduce some of the uncertainty regarding the active load paths occurring at the deck level. The objectives of the SHM study were to obtain more information regarding the actual load paths and ascertain possible types of structural redundancy, to determine how to best model this type of structure, and to find ways to track ongoing deterioration using instrumentation. The SHM study involved controlled truck loading scenarios to permit measurement of the load paths and provide data to compare the measured results to a finite element (FE) model of the instrumented span. In addition, random loading scenarios were used to capture the vertical dynamic response of the structure in order to further refine the FE model. This study focused on the response of one-half of one interior span. A total of 72 strain gauges were installed. The downstream truss was highly instrumented at ten locations, three members of the upstream truss were instrumented to measure the distribution, and the floor joists in the downstream lane were instrumented to establish possible redundancy paths. Using an FE model in combination with the measured strain data, it was found that redundant load paths only existed at the level of the deck. The bottom chord members experienced non-zero strains once the control vehicle was past the span, possibly indicating some level of redundancy. The members believed to relieve a portion of the bottom chord tensile forces included the car joists, edge joists, and the timber deck. The amount of force transferred from the bottom chord to the deck members was found by FE analysis to be highly related to the lateral stiffness of the floor beams. The FE model was adjusted to match the measured results by modifying various modelling parameters. The most important features of the model were that all deck elements were modelled to be located at the elevation of the bottom chord, that the lateral stiffness of the floor beams was reduced by 50% to best represent the transfer of forces to deck elements, and that the stiffness of bottom chord members was reduced to 80% of their pristine values. In combination with calibrated modification factors applied to the measured values, this FE model is believed to be a useful tool to represent the behaviour of the structure to assist in detecting further damage by modelling the strain differential between members, and components of members.

Bridge scour is the term which describes the erosion of soil surrounding a bridge foundation due to water. Bridge scour can cause the reduction of the load carrying capacity of bridge foundations, excessive foundation settlements, and damage to bridge abutments. Bridges with foundations that are unstable for calculated and/or observed scour conditions are termed scour critical bridges. Approximately 25,000 bridges in the United States are classified as scour critical and about 600 of them are in Texas. This designation comes in part from the use of over-conservative methods that predict excessive scour depths in erosion resistant materials. Other methods have been developed to eliminate this over-conservatism but are uneconomical because they require site-specific erosion testing. The major contribution of this dissertation is a new method to assess a bridge for scour and erosion classification charts which categorizes the erodibility of geomaterials according to conventional engineering properties. The new method is a three level Bridge Scour Assessment (BSA) procedure which is relatively simple and economical. It does not require site-specific erosion testing and eliminates the over-conservatism in current methods. The first level, BSA 1, uses charts that extrapolate the maximum scour depth recorded during the life of the bridge to obtain the scour depth corresponding to a specified future flood event. The second level, BSA 2, determines the maximum scour depth and is carried out if BSA 1 does not conclude with a specific plan of action for the bridge. The third level, BSA 3, determines the time dependent scour depth and is carried out if BSA 2 does not conclude with a specific plan of action. The scour vulnerability depends on the comparison between the predicted and allowable scour depths. The 11 case histories used to validate the new method showed good agreement between predicted values and field measurements. BSA 1 was then applied to 16 bridges. In this process, 6 out of 10 bridges classified as scour critical by current methods were found to be stable. These results show that the new method allows for more realistic evaluation of bridges for scour while not requiring site-specific erosion testing.

Throughout the United States accelerated bridge construction is becoming increasingly popular to meet growing transportation demands while keeping construction time and costs to a minimum. This research focuses on eliminating the need to form full-depth concrete bridge deck overhangs, accelerating the construction of concrete bridge decks, by using full-depth precast prestressed concrete deck panels. Full-depth precast overhang panels in combination with cast-in-place (CIP) reinforced concrete are experimentally and analytically investigated to assess the structural performance. Experimental loaddeformation behavior for factored AASHTO LRFD design load limits is examined followed by the collapse capacity of the panel-to-panel seam that exists in the system. Adequate strength and stiffness of the proposed full-depth panels deem the design safe for implementation for the Rock Creek Bridge in Fort Worth, Texas. New failure theories are derived for interior and exterior bridge deck spans as present code-based predictions provide poor estimates of the ultimate capacity. A compound shear-flexure failure occurs at interior bays between the CIP topping and stay-in-place (SIP) panel. Overhang failure loads are characterized as a mixed failure of flexure on the loaded panel and shear at the panel-to-panel seam. Based on these results design recommendations are presented to optimize the reinforcing steel layout used in concrete bridge decks.

In Turkey, big investments are made to improve the existing train lines for use of new high speed trains. Most of the bridges on the existing train lines are typical and in this thesis one of the standard types, the classic steel truss bridge is investigated. This thesis presents the dynamic investigation of standard type existing truss bridge for passenger comfort criteria under the high speed train loadings. Two different computational analysis models have been developed to idealize the vehicle-bridge modeling to evaluate the passenger comfort that were influenced by dynamic vibrations on bridges induced by trains. Field tests of this bridge have been conducted by two separate institutes, Middle East Technical University and Turkish State Railways, to determine the state of the bridge under existing low-speed train loadings. Eigenvalue and Time history analysis of the LARSA 4D structural analysis program has been used to investigate the vehicle bridge interactions. The solutions obtained from the analysis have been evaluated with the experimental results. Different rehabilitation options are analytically studied to improve the serviceability of standard steel truss bridges per Eurocode 1990:2002, Eurocode 1991-2:2003, UIC 774-3 and UIC 776-1. The focus of this research is to define a relationship between span weight per meter and passenger comfort as well as the stiffness of this type of bridge.

Recent devastating earthquakes revealed that bridges are one of the most vulnerable components of the transportation systems. These seismic events have emphasized the need to mitigate the risk resulting from the failure of the bridges. Depending on the seismicity of the bridge local site, seismic vulnerability assessment of the bridges can be done based on the fragility curves. These curves are conditional probability functions which give the probability of a bridge attaining or exceeding a particular damage level for an earthquake of a given intensity level. In this dissertation, analytical fragility curves are developed for the ordinary highway bridges in Turkey constructed after the 1990s to be used in the assessment of their seismic vulnerability. Bridges are first grouped into certain major bridge classes based on their structural attributes and sample bridges are generated to account for the structural variability. Nonlinear response history analyses are conducted for each bridge sample with their detailed 3-D analytical models under different earthquake ground motions having varying seismic intensities. Several engineering demand parameters are employed in the determination of seismic response of the bridge components as well as defining damage limit states in terms of member capacities. Fragility curves are obtained from the probability of exceeding each specified damage limit state for each major bridge class. Skew and single-column bent bridges are found to be the most vulnerable ones in comparison with the other bridge classes. Developed fragility curves can be implemented in the seismic risk assessment packages for mitigation purposes.

Proper bridge design is based on consideration of structural, hydraulic, and geotechnical conformities at an optimum level. The objective of this study is to develop an optimization-based methodology to select appropriate dimensions for components of a river bridge such that the aforementioned design aspects can be satisfied jointly. The structural and geotechnical design parts uses a statisticallybased technique, artificial neural network (ANN) models. Therefore, relevant data of many bridge projects were collected and analyzed from different aspects to put them into a matrix form. ANN architectures are used in the objective function of the optimization problem, which is modeled using Genetic Algorithms with penalty functions as constraint handling method. Bridge scouring reliability comprises one of the constraints, which is performed using Monte-Carlo Simulation technique. All these mechanisms are assembled in a software framework, named as AIROB. Finally, an application built on AIROB is presented to assess the outputs of the software by focusing on the evaluations of hydraulic &ndash / structure interactions.

Self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is a new, innovative construction material that can be placed into forms without the need for mechanical vibration. The mixture proportions are critical for producing quality SCC and require an optimized combination of coarse and fine aggregates, cement, water, and chemical and mineral admixtures. The required mixture constituents and proportions may affect the mechanical properties, bond characteristics, and long-term behavior, and SCC may not provide the same inservice performance as conventional concrete (CC). Different SCC mixture constituents and proportions were evaluated for mechanical properties, shear characteristics, bond characteristics, creep, and durability. Variables evaluated included mixture type (CC or SCC), coarse aggregate type (river gravel or limestone), and coarse aggregate volume. To correlate these results with full-scale samples and investigate structural behavior related to strand bond properties, four girder-deck systems, 40 ft (12 m) long, with CC and SCC pretensioned girders were fabricated and tested. Results from the research indicate that the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials Load and Resistance Factor Design (AASHTO LRFD) Specifications can be used to estimate the mechanical properties of SCC for a concrete compressive strength range of 5 to 10 ksi (34 to 70 MPa). In addition, the research team developed prediction equations for concrete compressive strength ranges from 5 to 16 ksi (34 to 110 MPa). With respect to shear characteristics, a more appropriate expression is proposed to estimate the concrete shear strength for CC and SCC girders with a compressive strength greater than 10 ksi (70 MPa). The author found that girder-deck systems with Type A SCC girders exhibit similar flexural performance as deck-systems with CC girders. The AASHTO LRFD (2006) equations for computing the cracking moment, nominal moment, transfer length, development length, and prestress losses may be used for SCC girder-deck systems similar to those tested in this study. For environments exhibiting freeze-thaw cycles, a minimum 16-hour release strength of 7 ksi (48 MPa) is recommended for SCC mixtures.

Due to their structural efficiency and architectural elegance, concrete arches have long been used in bridge applications. However, the construction of concrete arches requires significant temporary supporting structures, which prevent their widespread use in modern bridges. A relatively new form of arch bridges is the network arch, in which a dense arrangement of inclined hangers is used. Network arches are subjected to considerably smaller bending moments and deflections than traditional arches and are therefore suitable for modern, accelerated construction methods in which the arches are fabricated off-site and then transported to the bridge location. However, service-level stresses, which play a critical role in the performance of the structure, are relatively unknown for concrete network arches and have not been sufficiently investigated in the previous research on concrete arches. The primary objective of this dissertation is to improve the understanding of short-term and time-dependent stresses in concrete arches, and more specifically, concrete network arches. The research presented herein includes extensive field monitoring of the West 7th Street Bridge in Fort Worth, Texas, which is the first precast network arch bridge and probably the first concrete network arch bridge in the world. The bridge consists of twelve identically designed concrete network arches that were precast and post-tensioned before they were transported to the bridge site and erected. A series of vibrating wire gages were embedded in the arches and were monitored throughout the construction and for a few months after the bridge was opened to traffic. The obtained data were processed, and structural response parameters were evaluated to support the safe construction of the innovative arches, identify their short-term and time-dependent structural behavior, and verify the modeling assumptions. The variability of stresses among the arches was also used to assess the reliability of stress calculations. The results of this study provide valuable insight into the elastic, thermal, and time-dependent behavior of concrete arches in general and concrete network arches in particular. The knowledge gained in this investigation also has broader applications towards understanding the behavior of indeterminate prestressed concrete structures that are subjected to variable boundary conditions and thermal and time-dependent effects.