Seminar - Trung van Doan- Long Term Behaviour of Concrete Bridges

Wednesday, November 8, 2000, 3 - 4 pm
Civil Engineering Lecture Room 3

Abstract

Large prestressed concrete structures are very sensitive to creep and shrinkage which normally induce large deflection effects. These effects can cause severe cracking generally leading to unserviceability and result in failure. Designers tend to rely on the simplified procedures contained in codes of practice for the estimation of service load behaviour. Such procedures usually oversimplify a complex problem and are often unreliable and conceptually misleading.

The aim of this project is to model, examine and predict creep and shrinkage effects in prestressed concrete box girder bridges. Different prediction models will be tried out and compared with actual deflections from a bridge. An assessment of the applicability of various models to prestressed concrete box girder bridges will be made.

It is hoped that this project will result in improvement of the design of concrete structures for long-term behaviour.