Design, construction and load testing of the Pat Daly Bridge in Washington County, MO, with internal glass fiber reinforced polymers reinforcement.

DTRT06-G-0014The overarching goal of this project is to deploy and assess an innovative corrosion-free bridge construction technology for long-termperformance of new and existing bridges. The research objective of this project is to conduct a comprehensive study (instrumentation,construction, both laboratory and field evaluation) of a rapidly constructed and durable, three-span bridge with cast-in-place claddingsteel reinforced concrete substructure and precast concrete decks/girders reinforced with glass fiber reinforced polymers (GFRP). Thebridge has one conventional concrete-girder span, one conventional steel-girder span, and one innovative concrete box-girder span.The conventional concrete and steel girders were used to demonstrate the effective use of corrosion-free bridge decks in deckreplacement projects and, as benchmarks, to demonstrate the pros and cons of the innovative concrete box girders. The bridge wasinstrumented with embedded strain gauges to monitor the strains at critical locations during load testing. The collected data will allowthe understanding of load distribution in various GFRP bars of the innovative concrete box girders and bridge deck slabs. Specifically,a full-scale concrete box girder and a full-scale concrete slab with internal GFRP reinforcement were tested in the Highbay StructuresLaboratory at Missouri S&T to ensure that the test bridge components behaved as designed prior to the field construction.Furthermore, in-situ load tests of the completed bridge were conducted to demonstrate the load capacity and behavior of individualcomponents and the bridge as a system. The field validated technology will have a longlasting value for future deck replacementprojects of existing bridges and new constructions. It will provide a viable alternative to conventional bridge systems/materials for theimprovement of our Nation\u2019s deteriorating infrastructure