Analysis of an Instrumented Jointless Bridge

Costs of replacement and maintenance of expansion joints are often a large part of the costs associated with bridge maintenance. To replace these expansion joints or eliminate some of them on structures could greatly reduce the costs. Link slab is a new design approach, which could replace the traditional expansion joints. A link slab is the portion of the bridge deck that connects two adjacent simple-span girders. Link slabs also reduce the damage to the substructure of bridges due to water penetration and debris accumulation in the expansion joint. The objective of this research is to validate the design assumptions associated with designing link slabs, investigate a limit states design procedure and develop a program for the long-term monitoring of an instrumented link slab. This thesis provides details about testing and analysis, which were useful in accomplishing the research objectives. It also provides information about the datalogger software that was used in this project and also details the computer program that was written in Microsoft Excel to aid in the data collection and sorting.

Author dc:creator

• Wing, Kenneth Michael

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Mervyn Kowalsky, Committee Chair
• Paul Zia, Committee Co-Chair
• Tasnim Hassan, Committee Member

• data acquisition
• instrumentation
• jointless bridge
• link slab

Statement dc:rights

• I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

Dc Identifier Other

etd-04072003-212829

OAI record oai:identifier

https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Arepository.lib.ncsu.edu%3A1840.16%2F1395