Post on 14-Jun-2015
Ryan Hickox
George Mason University
Civil and Infrastructure Engineering
Highway bridge program established in 2001 to determine bridge sufficiency in order to allocate government funding
Concrete bridges are failing due to wear and poor maintenance
The program to fix all of America’s bridges is proving to be too costly
UHPC is stronger, more lightweight, and has lower permissivity than high performance concrete
Secret is steel fibers in concrete mixDisadvantages include a higher initial cost,
longer mixing and settling time, and a lack of American companies that produce UHPC
UHPC should become the standard for new bridge construction and repairs to existing bridges
Advantages of UHPC would outweigh initial costs and production time
Is there a way to reduce cost by reducing steel fiber while still retaining material advantages?
Produce concrete I-beams using UHPC with different percentages of steel fibers mixed in; note cost, weight, mixing time, and settling time
Test I-beams in a lab to find shear strength to find what advantage, if any, there is to reducing steel fiber content
Publish resultsConstruct a bridge using UHPC with reduced
fiber contentEstablish cost value of return on initial
investment by reducing cost of maintenance