In Florida a number of highway bridges were retrofitted on their reinforced concrete (RC) girders with carbon-fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) during the 1990's. Their conditions, after being in service for approximately 10 years, are of significant interest to the State's highway authority, as well as researchers in the region. This paper will evaluate if a load test on one of such bridges, which was retrofitted with CFRP at the girders in the splash-zone and thus was subjected to severe environmental conditions, is a feasible technique to evaluate the actual condition of the CFRP. A 3-dimensional Finite Element Model (FEM) was utilized to assess the load-deflection behavior of the bridge. An analytical study was used to evaluate the effective moment of inertia of the strengthened beams modeled on the FEM. The results indicate that the deflection change due to the amount of CFRP sheets assumed to be effective on the beam is insignificant. The paper also shows that it would not be feasible to estimate changes in the properties in the CFRP based only on deflection and strain measurements.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-1905 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Creators | Turizo-Rico, Carlos |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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