RESEARCH ARTICLE


Diaphragm Damage of Precast Concrete T-Shape Girder Bridge: Analysis and Strengthening



Yanwei Niu*, 1, 2, Bangjun Liu3, Yu Zhao1, Shuai Rong1, Pingming Huang4
1 School of Highway, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China
2 Loess Region Key Laboratory of Transportation Ministry, Taiyuan, China
3 TYLI Engineering Consulting
4 Middle of South 2nd Ring Road, Xi’an, 710064, China


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Creative Commons License
© 2014 Niu et al;

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the School of Highway, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China; Tel: +86-(029)-82336336; E-mail: niuyanwei@chd.edu.cn


Abstract

For advantage of economical and practical construction, precast T-shape girder bridge is commmonly used in China. In recent years, damage of diaphragm became a serious problem in operation and maintenance. In this study, based on finite element (FE) analysis of an actual bridge, stress distribution and failure process of diaphragm is demonstrated. The result shows that the stress of middle diaphragms started to beyond the limit firstly, under heavey load of 1.5 times equivalent Grade highway-I live load. Then, method of Double-K brace to strengthen the transveral connnection of the exist bridges is proposed and applied on background bridge. Based on the field test, tensile stress of diaphragms concrete reduced 69.4% when Double-K brace were adopted, and the lateral integrity of precast T-beam bridge could be improved effectively.

Keywords: Concrete bridge, T-shape girder, diaphragm, damage, strengthening.