Performance Evaluation of Damage-Integrated Composite Steel Girder Highway Bridges

Abstract

AcknowledgementFirst and foremost, I would like to express my most sincere thanks and appreciation to Dr. Devin K. Harris for his years of advice on this dissertation and his continuous support during my time at Michigan Tech. and University of Virginia. More than all the scientific knowledge and experience with regards to my research, you have helped me tremendously with the career pursuit and at the same time allowed me to flourish on my own. All the classroom experiences I have gained during these four years would have not been possible without your trust and help. I will be forever grateful for your guidance and wisdom, which I believe will continue to prove invaluable to me throughout my future career.My dissertation committee, Dr. Theresa M. Ahlborn, Dr. Thomas T. Baber, Dr. Osman E.Ozbulut, and Dr. John R. Scully, your guidance, assistant, and time are much appreciated. Your experience and insight have given me the opportunity to visualize concepts from different perspectives which I believe helped me significantly to improve the research work done.I would also like to express my appreciation to my research sponsor; Mid-Atlantic Universities Transportation Centers (MAUTC) for providing support and interest for this project. I am also thankful to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at theUniversity of Virginia for their financial support that enabled me to attend several national conferences and annual meetings during my PhD, and for the unique opportunity to teach my own class on "Bridge Engineering and Design". I would also like to thank Dr. Brown, Dr. Chase, Dr. Kassner for providing structural details and plans of the selected in-service structures within the Commonwealth of Virginia; and Mr.Prasad Nallapaneni from Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) for his help on providing details on the selected damage scenarios. AbstractThe safety and condition of transportation infrastructure has been at the forefront of national debates in recent times due to the catastrophic bridge failures occurred in the United States, but the issue has been a longstanding challenge for transportation agencies for many years as resources continue to diminish. The performance of this infrastructure has a direct influence on the lives of most of citizens in developed regions by providing a critical lifeline between communities and the transportation of goods and services, and as a critical component of the transportation network, bridges have received a lot of attention regarding condition assessment and maintenance practices. To date, several inspection methods and monitoring techniques have been developed and used by the bridge owners to monitor the in-service behavior and detect different sourced of damage and deterioration in bridge structures. Despite successful implementation of these methods, what is still lacking is a fundamental understanding of the system behavior in the presence of deteriorating conditions that can be used to estimate the remaining service life of the structure and facilit...

Design and Fabrication of Low Cost Automatic Cleaning Module for Solar PV Systems

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