As part of the ongoing research on shear at the Phil M. Ferguson Structural Engineering Laboratory (FSEL) located at The University of Texas at Austin, the anchorage controlled shear capacity of prestressed concrete bridge girders was in this research studied in two distinct ways, experimentally and analytically. The results of this research are an important step towards improving understanding of strand anchorage related issues. For the experimental program, two full-scale Tx46 prestressed concrete bridge girders were fabricated at FSEL. The Tx46 girders were topped with a concrete, composite deck. Both ends of the two girders were instrumented and tested. For the analytical program, a new Anchorage Evaluation Database (AEDB) was developed, by filtering and expanding the University of Texas Prestressed Concrete Shear Database (UTPCSDB), and then evaluated. The AEDB contained 72 shear tests, of which 25 were anchorage failures and 47 were shear failures. The results and analysis from the experimental and analytical programs generated the following three main conclusions: (1) A reasonable percentage of debonding in Tx Girders does not have a marked impact on girder shear capacity calculated using the 2010 AASHTO LRFD General Procedure. (2) The AASHTO anchorage equation is conservative but not accurate. In other words, this equation cannot be used to accurately differentiate between a shear failure and an anchorage failure. In regards to conservativeness, anchorage failures in AASHTO-type girders may lead to unconservative results with respect to the 2010 AASHTO LRFD General Procedure. (3) The 2010 AASHTO anchorage resistance model and its corresponding equation do not apply to Tx Girders. Because of the Tx Girders' wider bottom flange, cracks do not propagate across the strands as they do in AASHTO-type girders. This fact yields overly conservative results for Tx Girders with respect to AASHTO Equation 5.8.3.5-1. In summary, this research uncovered the short-sided nature of the AASHTO anchorage design method. Given its short-comings, there is an obvious need for a validated, comprehensive, and rational approach to anchorage design that considers strength and serviceability. To appropriately develop this method, additional full-scale experimental testing is needed to expand the AEDB, as currently there are not enough tests to distinguish major, general trends and variables. Any future additional research would be expected to further validate and expand the significant findings that this research has produced and so take the next step toward safer, more-efficient bridge designs. / text

This thesis presents the results of a research project that tested five friction reducing techniques on the bearing ends of precast prestressed concrete bridge girders. The five techniques were the following: an oil coated surface, embedded steel plate with an oil coated surface, embedded steel angle with an oil coated surface, teflon pad, and a wax lubricant.

Corrosion of reinforcing steel is a major cause of damage to bridges in the United States. A possible solution to the corrosion issue is carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) material. CFRP material has been implemented as flexural reinforcement in many cases, but not as transverse reinforcing. The CFRP material studied in this thesis was NEFMAC grid, which consists of vertical and horizontal CFRP tows that form an 8 in. by 10 in. grid. The use of NEFMAC grid as transverse reinforcing has not been previously investigated. First, the development length of NEFMAC grid was determined. Next, an 18 ft long 19 in. deep beam, modeled after prestressed Bulb-T beams, was created with NEFMAC grid reinforcement. The beam was loaded with a single point load near the support to induce shear failure. Beams were fitted with instrumentation to capture shear cracking data. Shear capacity calculations following four methods were compared to test results. Lastly, a parametric study with strut-and-tie modeling was performed on Precast Bulb-T (PCBT) girders to determine the amount of CFRP grid needed for reinforcement in the anchorage zone. This thesis concludes that NEFMAC grid is a viable shear design option and presents the initial recommendations for design methods. These methods provide a basis for the design of NEFMAC grid shear reinforcing that could be used as a starting point for future testing of full scale specimens. When designing with NEFMAC grid, the full manufacturer's guaranteed strength should be used as it is the average reduced by three standard deviations. AASHTO modified compression field theory provides the best prediction of shear capacity. For anchorage zone design, working stress limits for CFRP grids need to be increased to allow more of the strength to be implemented in design. / Master of Science

Corrosion of reinforcing steel causes shorter life spans in bridges throughout the United States. The use of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) materials as the flexural reinforcement in bridge girders has been extensively studied. However, CFRP transverse reinforcement has not been as rigorously investigated, and many studies have focused on CFCC stirrups. The use of C-Grid as an option for transverse reinforcing has not been previously investigated. This thesis concludes that C-Grid is a viable shear design option and presents the initial recommendations for design methods. These methods provide a basis for the design of C-Grid shear reinforcing that could be used as a starting point for future testing of full scale specimens. This testing program first determined the mechanical properties of C-Grid and its development length. Four 18 ft long 19 in. deep beams, modeled after prestressed Bulb-T beams, were created to test the C-Grid, as well as steel and CFCC stirrups. The beams were loaded with a single point load closer to one end to create a larger shear load for a given flexural moment. Overall beam displacement was measured to determine when flexural reinforcement yielding was reached, and beams were fitted with rosettes and instrumentation to capture initiation of shear cracking. Shear capacity calculations following four methods were compared to test results. The design method should follow the AASHTO modified compression field theory with equations for β and θ. The manufacturer's guaranteed strength should be used for design as long as that strength is the average reduced by three standard deviations. Shear crack widths are controlled to a similar size as steel stirrups when using at least two layers of grid. / Master of Science

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Corrosion damage reduces the load-carrying capacity of bridges which poses a threat to passenger safety. The objective of this research was to reduce the resources involved in conventional bridge inspections which are an important tool in the condition assessment of bridges and to help in determining if live load testing is necessary. This research proposes a framework to link semi-automated damage detection on prestressed concrete bridge girders with the estimation of their residual flexural capacity. The framework was implemented on four full-scale corrosion damaged girders from decommissioned bridges in Virginia. 3D point clouds of the girders reconstructed from images using Structure from Motion (SfM) approach were textured with images containing cracks detected at pixel level using a U-Net (Fully Convolutional Network). Spalls were detected by identifying the locations where normals associated with the points in the 3D point cloud deviated from being perpendicular to the reference directions chosen, by an amount greater than a threshold angle. 3D textured mesh models, overlaid with the detected cracks and spalls were used as 3D damage maps to determine reduced cross-sectional areas of prestressing strands to account for the corrosion damage as per the recommendations of Naito, Jones, and Hodgson (2011). Scaling them to real-world dimensions enabled the measurement of any required dimension, eliminating the need for physical contact. The flexural capacities of a box beam and an I-beam estimated using strain compatibility analysis were validated with the actual capacities at failure sections determined from four destructive tests conducted by Al Rufaydah (2020). Along with the reduction in the cross-sectional areas of strands, limiting the ultimate strain that heavily corroded strands can develop was explored as a possible way to improve the results of the analysis. Strain compatibility analysis was used to estimate the ultimate rupture strain, in the heavily corroded bottommost layer prestressing strands exposed before the box beam was tested. More research is required to associate each level of strand corrosion with an average ultimate strain at which the corroded strands rupture. This framework was found to give satisfactory estimates of the residual strength. Reduction in resources involved in current visual inspection practices and eliminating the need for physical access, make this approach worthwhile to be explored further to improve the output of each step in the proposed framework. / Master of Science / Corrosion damage is a major concern for bridges as it reduces their load carrying capacity. Bridge failures in the past have been attributed to corrosion damage. The risk associated with corrosion damage caused failures increases as the infrastructure ages. Many bridges across the world built forty to fifty years ago are now in a deteriorated condition and need to be repaired and retrofitted. Visual inspections to identify damage or deterioration on a bridge are very important to assess the condition of the bridge and determine the need for repairing or for posting weight restrictions for the vehicles that use the bridge. These inspections require close physical access to the hard-to-reach areas of the bridge for physically measuring the damage which involves many resources in the form of experienced engineers, skilled labor, equipment, time, and money. The safety of the personnel involved in the inspections is also a major concern. Nowadays, a lot of research is being done in using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) like drones for bridge inspections and in using artificial intelligence for the detection of cracks on the images of concrete and steel members. Girders or beams in a bridge are the primary longitudinal load carrying members. Concrete inherently is weak in tension. To address this problem, High Strength steel reinforcement (called prestressing steel or prestressing strands) in prestressed concrete beams is pre-loaded with a tensile force before the application of any loads so that the regions which will experience tension under the service loads would be subjected to a pre-compression to improve the performance of the beam and delay cracking. Spalls are a type of corrosion damage on concrete members where portions of concrete fall off (section loss) due to corrosion in the steel reinforcement, exposing the reinforcement to the environment which leads to accelerated corrosion causing a loss of cross-sectional area and ultimately, a rupture in the steel. If the process of detecting the damage (cracks, spalls, exposed or severed reinforcement, etc.) is automated, the next logical step that would add great value would be, to quantify the effect of the damage detected on the load carrying capacity of the bridges. Using a quantified estimate of the remaining capacity of a bridge, determined after accounting for the corrosion damage, informed decisions can be made about the measures to be taken. This research proposes a stepwise framework to forge a link between a semi-automated visual inspection and residual capacity evaluation of actual prestressed concrete bridge girders obtained from two bridges that have been removed from service in Virginia due to extensive deterioration. 3D point clouds represent an object as a set of points on its surface in three dimensional space. These point clouds can be constructed either using laser scanning or using Photogrammetry from images of the girders captured with a digital camera. In this research, 3D point clouds are reconstructed from sequences of overlapping images of the girders using an approach called Structure from Motion (SfM) which locates matched pixels present between consecutive images in the 3D space. Crack-like features were automatically detected and highlighted on the images of the girders that were used to build the 3D point clouds using artificial intelligence (Neural Network). The images with cracks highlighted were applied as texture to the surface mesh on the point cloud to transfer the detail, color, and realism present in the images to the 3D model. Spalls were detected on 3D point clouds based on the orientation of the normals associated with the points with respect to the reference directions. Point clouds and textured meshes of the girders were scaled to real-world dimensions facilitating the measurement of any required dimension on the point clouds, eliminating the need for physical contact in condition assessment. Any cracks or spalls that went unidentified in the damage detection were visible on the textured meshes of the girders improving the performance of the approach. 3D textured mesh models of the girders overlaid with the detected cracks and spalls were used as 3D damage maps in residual strength estimation. Cross-sectional slices were extracted from the dense point clouds at various sections along the length of each girder. The slices were overlaid on the cross-section drawings of the girders, and the prestressing strands affected due to the corrosion damage were identified. They were reduced in cross-sectional area to account for the corrosion damage as per the recommendations of Naito, Jones, and Hodgson (2011) and were used in the calculation of the ultimate moment capacity of the girders using an approach called strain compatibility analysis. Estimated residual capacities were compared to the actual capacities of the girders found from destructive tests conducted by Al Rufaydah (2020). Comparisons are presented for the failure sections in these tests and the results were analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of this framework. More research is to be done to determine the factors causing rupture in prestressing strands with different degrees of corrosion. This framework was found to give satisfactory estimates of the residual strength. Reduction in resources involved in current visual inspection practices and eliminating the need for physical access, make this approach worthwhile to be explored further to improve the output of each step in the proposed framework.