HPC Prestressed I-Girder Bridge - Monitoring Performance from Hydration to Service*

Vellore S. Gopalaratnam, Ph.D., P.E.

Visiting Professor, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras
218 BSB, Dept. of Civil Engineering, IIT-Madras, Adyar, Chennai 600 036
Office: 2257-4312, E-Mail: gopalv@iitm.ac.in
Professor of Civil Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri 65211-2200
Office: (573) 882-2683, FAX: (573) 882-4784, E-Mail: GopalaratnamV@missouri.edu

Extended Summary

Bridge A5529 in Jefferson County, Missouri, USA, was constructed using high performance
concrete (HPC) prestressed I-girders. This bridge is Missouri’s first high performance concrete
bridge. Four of the twenty girders for Bridge A5529 were instrumented to monitor temperatures,
strains, and deflections from when the girders were fabricated up to approximately one year in
service. Additional laboratory experiments included tests for compression response, fracture
characteristics, unrestrained creep and unrestrained shrinkage. The unrestrained creep and
shrinkage tests were also performed on cylinders from a companion normal strength concrete
(NSC, Bridge A5530) bridge for comparison. Thirty-six strain-gaged bars, sixty-seven
thermocouples, thirty-two vibrating wire strain gages, and eight instrumented stirrups were
installed in the four girders, diaphragm, and deck slab as a part of the instrumentation program.
External measurements made during girder fabrication included transfer length, end slip, camber,
and an infrared thermographic survey of the steel mold for surface temperature distribution.
The objectives of the instrumentation program included to study the early-age response
during curing/hydration, investigate end-zone stresses during prestress transfer, investigate
unrestrained creep and shrinkage response of HPC used in the girders and compare them with
NSC used typically, examine temperature and strain variations during storage, transport and
construction, compare strains and deflections during a load test to analytical predictions, and to
examine strains due to daily and seasonal service temperature variations.
It was concluded that cracking at girder ends could result from a combination of residual
stresses due to early-age differential thermal loading and stresses from prestress transfer.
Improved curing procedures and potential design modifications can minimize this potential for
cracking.
Unrestrained shrinkage strains in HPC were observed to be approximately 40% less than that
measured for NSC under similar laboratory conditions. Total creep was 5-15% smaller for HPC
compared to NSC, however the basic creep components were nearly equal. HPC exhibited high
early creep (within 60 days) which soon stabilized resulting in very little additional creep strains.
The improved creep and shrinkage performance of HPC can be incorporated in design so as to
allow more accurate prediction of prestress losses.
The influence line of strains from a load-test (using a total truck load of 41,780 lbs) produced
predictable profiles, although the overall as-built response was approximately 30-40% stiffer
compared to analytical predictions (which did not include stiffness contributions from curb,
railing, barriers etc.). Maximum strains from daily and seasonal temperature variations were
observed to be significant and 5-6 times than the maximum strains observed from the load-test.
It would be prudent to review design procedures so that bridges of this type (continuous
composite prestressed I-girder) could be explicitly designed for these levels of service thermal
loading in addition to normal design loading.

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* Invited presentation at the Workshop on Recent Advances in Structural Engineering (RASE 2015), May 7-8,
2015, CSIR-Structural Engineering Research Centre, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India