Health monitoring of Ironton-Russell bridge for rating purposes

2001-01-01
Lenett, MS
Hunt, VJ
Helmicki, AJ
Türer, Ahmet
The Ironton-Russell truss bridge spanning the Ohio River between the cities of Ironton, Ohio, and Russell, Kentucky, consists of a three-span cantilever through truss with a suspended truss in the center span and a fourth span that is essentially a simple-span through truss. Visual inspections of this bridge revealed that recent welded repairs and modifications to various truss members reduced their fatigue classification as well as modified original design and construction details. When the visual inspection team identified these details along with section loss at certain truss verticals and diagonals, it was their recommendation to reduce the allowable load on the bridge from 208 260 to 26 700 N (23.4 to 3 tons). However, a 26 700-N (3-ton) load limit would hinder the transportation of heavy materials across the bridge and therefore have a severe impact on the local economy. Consequently, a series of nondestructive field tests were organized and performed on the bridge to provide better assessments of load capacity and in situ structural health. Controlled truck load tests involving resistance-based strain gauges were conducted, and an instrumented monitor utilizing low-speed (vibrating-wire) strain gauges was installed at the site. The respective data recorded during these field efforts were used not only to evaluate environmental effects on the bridge but also to compute the load rating for each of the instrumented members. The resulting objective-based load ratings and their corresponding allowable live loads greatly exceeded the recommended 26 700-N (3-ton) load limit. Essentially, objective data identified or characterized in situ structural mechanisms and therefore provided the basis for more sound and realistic load ratings.
DESIGN OF STRUCTURES 2001

Suggestions

Lifetime Performance Analysis of Existing Reinforced Concrete Bridges. II: Application
Akgül, Ferhat (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2005-06-01)
This study, being the second part of a two-part paper, presents the application of a lifetime performance analysis methodology to three reinforced concrete bridges located in an existing bridge network in Colorado. The focus of this paper is on reinforced concrete slabs and girders of these bridges. The limit state equations were previously derived in the companion paper by grouping the random variables, deterministic parameters, and constant coefficients in such a way that the formulas are applicable to re...
Bond Characteristics of Overlays Placed over Bridge Decks Sealed with High Molecular Weight Methacrylate
Shahrooz, Bahram; Gillum, Arnol; Cole, Jeremiah; Türer, Ahmet (SAGE Publications, 2000-01-01)
The bond strength between portland cement overlays and bridge decks treated with high-molecular-weight methacrylate sealers is examined. The data universally suggest that sealers reduce the available bond strength. However, extra surface preparation techniques, such as light sandblasting of the sealed surface or broadcasting sand over the surface immediately after scaling [at approximately 1 kg/m(2) (20 lb/100 ft(2))], restore the strengths to 80 or 85 percent, respectively, of the unsealed surface. Service...
Behavior of curved steel trapezoidal box-girders during construction
Topkaya, Cem; Frank, KH (Elsevier BV, 2004-05-01)
In recent years, steel, trapezoidal box-girders for curved highway interchanges have been used extensively. For these structural systems, the majority of the steel girder cross-sectional stresses occur during the concrete pouring sequence. This paper describes a comprehensive study on the behavior of curved girders during construction. Data collected for the current research shows significant differences between the measured and predicted quantities, particularly for later pours. An overview of the steel-co...
Reliability-based optimization of river bridges using artificial intelligence techniques
Turan, K. Hakan; Yanmaz, Ali Melih (Canadian Science Publishing, 2011-10-01)
Proper bridge design is based on joint consideration of structural, hydraulic, and geotechnical conformities. An optimization-based methodology has been developed to obtain appropriate dimensions of a river bridge to meet these aspects. Structural and geotechnical design parts use a statistically-based artificial neural network (ANN) model. Therefore, relevant data were collected from many bridge projects and analyzed to form a matrix. Artificial neural network architectures are used in the objective functi...
Seismic retrofitting of highway bridges in Illinois using friction pendulum seismic isolation bearings and modeling procedures
Dicleli, Murat (Elsevier BV, 2003-07-01)
In this paper, the economical and structural efficiency of friction pendulum bearings (FPB) for retrofitting typical seismically vulnerable bridges in the State of Illinois is studied. For this purpose, a bridge was carefully selected by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) to represent typical seismically vulnerable bridges commonly used in the State of Illinois. A comprehensive structural model of the bridge was first constructed for seismic analysis. An iterative multi-mode response spectrum ...
Citation Formats
M. Lenett, V. Hunt, A. Helmicki, and A. Türer, “Health monitoring of Ironton-Russell bridge for rating purposes,” DESIGN OF STRUCTURES 2001, pp. 67–75, 2001, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/36098.