About the fellowship

Backgroung

Recently, the re-assessment of the collapse of the Koror-Babeldaob Bridge (in 1996), a pre-stressed bridge built by the cantilever method, concluded that this was due to excessive deflections linked to concrete creep and shrinkage that appeared and grew non- linearly some years after construction. Interestingly, similar trends have been found for a group of 56 similar bridge spans, raising the question whether such concerns could influence the maintenance and service life of a high number of pre-stressed bridges in Europe and beyond with important socio-economic impact.

Objectives

The five objectives of the LostPreCon project were set as follows: • Objective 1: Review existing models for shrinkage and creep at specimen level. • Objective 2: Establish robust hybrid FE models for medium/long- term performance predictions. • Objective 3: Develop a novel monitoring approach based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC). • Objective 4: Formulate a time-dependent reliability assessment framework, addressing creep and shrinkage uncertainties. • Objective 5: Produce representative performance-time profiles for pre-stressed bridges based on the proposed framework and models.

http://www.ketchum.org/bridgecollapsepix/Palau3-525x782.jpg

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About the fellowship

Backgroung

Recently, the re-assessment of the collapse of the Koror-Babeldaob Bridge (in 1996), a pre-stressed bridge built by the cantilever method, concluded that this was due to excessive deflections linked to concrete creep and shrinkage that appeared and grew non-linearly some years after construction. Interestingly, similar trends have been found for a group of 56 similar bridge spans, raising the question whether such concerns could influence the maintenance and service life of a high number of pre-stressed bridges in Europe and beyond with important socio-economic impact.

Objectives

The five objectives of the LostPreCon project were set as follows: • Objective 1: Review existing models for shrinkage and creep at specimen level. • Objective 2: Establish robust hybrid FE models for medium/long-term performance predictions. • Objective 3: Develop a novel monitoring approach based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC). • Objective 4: Formulate a time-dependent reliability assessment framework, addressing creep and shrinkage uncertainties. • Objective 5: Produce representative performance- time profiles for pre-stressed bridges based on the proposed framework and models.