Reinforcement Experiment of a Hollow Slab Bridge by External Prestressing

Abstract

Simply supported hollow slab bridge is widely used in highway network of China. Under overload vehicles, the concrete hinges of such bride are easily damaged, which usually causes single slab bearing and tremendously reduces the bridge’s load capacity. It is necessary to take some reinforcement measures to enhance the carrying capacity of such impaired bridge for traffic safety. In this paper, a field reinforcement experiment of an actual hollow slab bridge, which has experienced a destructive test with its transverse connections seriously damaged, was performed by applying external transverse and longitudinal prestress to it. The strengthening scheme adopted in this experiment was detailed. By means of static truck load test, the variation of deflections of the bridge before and after strengthening was obtained. The test results showed that the proposed strengthening method can effectively enhance the damaged hollow slab bridge’s transverse stiffness and improve its bearing capacity.