Abstract:
In bridge design, engineers strive to plan an economical structure that will safely
transmit loads to the ground without collapsing or deforming excessively. Since it is
difficult to predict the exact loading and circumstances that a bridge must withstand, all
bridge designs include a substantial margin of safety. Design standards vary throughout
the world, but all aim at ensuring that constructed bridges will provide many years of
service and will maintain an adequate margin of safety against failure.
Bridges are mainly faced to the problem of fatigue from cyclic loading condition which in
turn affects the future serviceability and performance of bridge. The future service ability
related behavior of bridge includes loss of internal stresses, deflection and crack.
PSC Bridges of longer span often exhibit larger long-term serviceability related
problems than it was assumed in the design calculation. The future serviceability and
performance check for PSC Bridge involves a number of steps which involves tedious and
complex calculations due to the presence of variable moving loads and other
environmental factors applied over service life of bridge.
In line with this, this thesis is focused on prediction of long term serviceability behavior
of a prestressed AWASH Bridge under a fatigue action starting from opening of traffic
(December 2014) to the end of 2030. In this case the problem is only for long term
behavior of un-cracked girder under fatigue action during its operational period. The
prediction is done using MATLAB, and MATHCAD PRIME spread sheet and it is shown
on appendix.
