Long-Term Effects Monitoring on Prestressed Concrete Bridge

Abstract

Balanced cantilever method is one most used method for the large span concrete bridge construction. Generally non-homogenous concrete structures with changing the structural system within its erection are sensitive to the deformation and stress prediction in time. Long-term monitoring system has become very important tool which enables to obtain basic information about actual structural behavior in time about stress and deformation level. It can also cover the other structural effects for example the temperature influence which can significantly affect to the later structural behavior. Generally bridge designers in practice do not have enough information about these influences within the structure erection over the time. Underestimating such above mentioned effects often causes that predicted values of stresses or deformation does not corresponded with the reality as was published for example in [1]. In boundary cases unexpected excessive deformations or crack opening due to the stresses distribution may lead to the serviceability problems, deterioration of aesthetics, and even early reconstruction of the bridge eventually. In this paper we would like to present some experiences with the long-term monitoring of bridge structure and performed structural analysis considering the real load history and structural scheme changing. Recorded strains development was compared with the numerical model results based on the expected behavior of prestressed concrete structure according to the European standard models, [3, 4].