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Essay / Project Story - 871
Current State of ResearchTraffic hazards, associated with aging and vulnerable infrastructure, present the potential for damage and loss of resources. Precast concrete girder bridges have emerged as a means to achieve more efficient designs. They offer many advantages such as ease of construction and relatively high durability. The prestressed beams are usually prefabricated on site and transported for erection before casting the composite decks. As a result, complete continuity between beams has usually been sacrificed in favor of ease of construction. Traditionally, bridge deck joints have gaps of 1 to 3 inches under operating conditions (LADOTD, 2002). These grooves inside the joints have the disadvantages of causing discomfort when driving, accumulation of debris, the need for maintenance, as the groove can enlarge over time due to settling of the support, the shrinkage and/or temperature change, deterioration of concrete due to greater dynamic impact loading. the tire hitting the span adjacent to the framework, in addition to rainwater leaking onto the bridge substructure, which can cause corrosion of the substructure (Saber et al. 2005, 2007). Even when strip seals are installed, they are typically worn down by vehicles and often break. Bridge expansion joints are used to accommodate thermal movements in the deck and other short and long term deck movements caused by creep, shrinkage, moisture changes, vehicles. traffic and other loads. However, deck joints are expensive to construct, install and maintain. Bridge drainage water, contaminated with chemicals such as de-icing salts, leaks through joints and can damage the bridge superstructure and pier caps below. This can lead to the destruction of vital parts of the bridge, such as the prestressing center...... middle of paper equation ......oment as well as the proposed FE models. This will allow the development of a simplified procedure that can be used in a design environment.Figure 1 Corrosion damage caused by chloride contamination leaks in bridge deck expansion joints (Lam, 2011).Obstacle 1: Evaluation of the continuity performance of bridge decks through real-time data collection. This requires a plan for field monitoring and data collection under live and environmental loads, including temperature changes. Barrier 2: The collected data contains outliers and requires special statistical analysis. To alleviate this problem, an executable graphical user interface (GUI) software package will be developed for analysis and processing of the collected data. An educational plan should train engineers involved in the bridge monitoring program to collect and analyze data..