The Mountain-Plains Consortium, part of the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University, Fargo, has released a report that describes attempts to establish the S-N curve for fatigue loading of notched wood-concrete connections, all based on repeated loading tests. Read the Report
The Illinois Center for Transportation at the University of Illinois has released a report that validates and calibrates the Illinois’s Department of Transportation implementation of design practice for its earthquake resisting system. Read the Report
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has released a tech brief that provides guidance for grout sampling, testing, data analysis, and interpretation of results. Read the Technical Brief
TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a project brief that provides an overview of SHRP 2 Project R04: Innovative Bridge Designs for Rapid Renewal, which developed standardized approaches to designing and constructing complete bridge systems. SHRP 2 Project R04 created the SHRP 2 Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) Toolkit, which includes recommended design standards and design…
Tom Warne Report, 9 June 2013 Sacramento Bee – May 30, 2013 Questions over corroded tendons, broken bolts and bad welds facing transportation officials over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge led to the announcement this week that the scheduled opening on Labor Day weekend would not be confirmed until July. Bay Area Toll Authority commissioners said officials are now…
AASHTO Journal. 7 June 2013 A Senate Appropriations panel, chaired by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), will hold a hearing next Thursday to examine the collapse of the I-5 bridge, which occurred May 23 just north of Seattle. The hearing will also consider that incident in the context of the overall status of the nation’s transportation infrastructure issues. Two witnesses are currently…
TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-R05-RR-1: Precast Concrete Pavement Technology reviews the available precast concrete pavement (PCP) systems; summarizes PCP applications; and offers suggested guidelines for the design, fabrication, installation, and selection of PCP systems. Read the Report
AASHTO Journal, 31 May 2013 Minnesota and Wisconsin departments of transportation officials joined local community members Tuesday to officially begin construction on the St. Croix Crossing project that will replace the 80-year-old structurally deficient and over-capacity Stillwater Lift Bridge, which connects Stillwater and Oak Park Heights in Minnesota with St. Joseph, Wisconsin. MnDOT announced last fall that the project,…
AASHTO Journal, 31 May 2013 A highway overpass in southeast Missouri collapsed early Saturday morning after a Union Pacific freight train and a BNSF freight train collided underneath, causing several rail cars to derail and smash into the bridge. “The damage is very extensive,” Missouri Department of Transportation engineer Mark Shelton told the Associated Press. “We’re going to end…
Tom Warne Report, 26 May 2013 Sacramento Bee – May 19, 2013 SAN FRANCISCO – The rising cost of the $6.5 billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge could skyrocket with the discovery of cable problems in addition to the bolt and rod issues previously detected. New concerns have surfaced on the skyway approach to the suspension span, where rain and…
Tom Warne Report, 26 May 2013 Associated Press – May 21, 2013 OLYMPIA, Wash. – Gov. Jay Inslee signed an $8.7 billion transportation budget this week that sends money to road maintenance and continues financing for existing major projects in the state. A legislative compromise on the controversial Columbia River Crossing Project was cut out of the budget by…
AASHTO Journal, 24 May 2013 The Federal Highway Administration announced last week it will soon be utilizing a new innovative technology to gauge the safety and structural integrity of bridges while saving time and money: a robot. The new tool, created through a partnership between FHWA and Rutgers University Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation, combines multiple advanced scans…
AASHTO Journal, 24 May 2013 President Obama’s U.S. Transportation Secretary nominee and Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx visited Capitol Hill Wednesday for his nomination hearing in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation. After opening remarks, Foxx briefly highlighted his credentials for the position and laid out his priorities: keeping the focus on safety across all transportation…
AASHTO Journal, 24 May 2013 Washington State Department of Transportation officials and local emergency response rescuers were pressed into action late Thursday when a portion of an Interstate 5 bridge located near Mount Vernon, about an hour north of Seattle, apparently collapsed, sending vehicles into the Skagit River below. There were no reports of fatalities from the incident. WSDOT…
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Final Report for NCHRP-IDEA Project 155: Corrosion Resistant, Structurally Reinforced, Thermal Spray Coatings for In Situ Repair of Load Bearing Structures addresses the potential use of high-velocity thermal spray for in-situ reclamation of corroded components in load bearing infrastructures. Read the Report
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) Final Report for NCHRP-IDEA Project 153: Bridge Retrofit Laser System addresses development of an advanced laser measurement system to accelerate the bridge retrofit process in order to reduce the time between identification of repair needs for resumption of service for a bridge. Read the Report
Tom Warne Report, 14 May 2013 KGO News – May 8, 2013 TREASURE ISLAND, Calif. – Caltrans has found a solution on how to fix the broken bolts on the Bay Bridge, but unfortunately it will not be cheap. The agency announced this week that it will cost between $5 million and $10 million to fix the problems with…
Tom Warne Report, 18 May 2013 Associated Press – May 14, 2013 SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s $6.3 billion eastern portion “has a fighting chance” of opening by the end of the year, in spite recent structural concerns, officials overseeing the construction reported Tuesday. State lawmakers grilled officials in charge of the project and their decision…
The Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas-Austin has released a report that evaluates Texas U-Beams including measurements of their concrete curing temperatures in square and skewed end blocks and establishment of the vertical shear capacity of their standard section loads.Read the Report Read the Report
The Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University has released a report that evaluates the feasibility of x-ray radiation, ground-penetrating radar, and magnetic flux leakage for detection and quantification of corrosion of embedded reinforcing steel. Read the Report
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 197: Guidelines for the Load and Resistance Factor Design and Rating of Riveted and Bolted Gusset-Plate Connections for Steel Bridges explores the failure modes of steel truss bridge gusset plated connections. The report also includes a review of past literature on the strength of hot-driven rivets. The following appendices are…
AASHTO Journal, 26 April 2013 The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has released interim revisions to the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design Specifications, 6th Edition.The new interim includes revisions to five of the 15 sections of the current LRFD Bridge Design Specifications: Concrete Structures, Steel Structures, Aluminum Structures, Buried Structures and Tunnel Liners, and Railings. The 184-page…
APRIL 2013 Caltrans Creates New Specification for Construction of Quiet Bridge Deck Surfaces Noise from bridges is an ongoing problem along U.S. highway systems, and efforts at noise mitigation can be costly as well as time-consuming. For example, sound walls, which work by interrupting the pathway between a noise source and the receiver, are often constructed along bridges that…
The Center for Transportation Research at the University of Texas at Austin has released a report that discusses optimizing reinforcement in the cast-in-place concrete placed on bridge decks and identifying ways of controlling cracking in precast, pre-stressed bridge deck panels. Read the Report
TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Renewal Project R06G has released a prepublication, non-edited version of a report titled Mapping Voids, De-bonding, Delaminations, Moisture, and Other Defects Behind or Within Tunnel Linings that identifies techniques that appear to provide useful information for evaluating tunnel linings. Read the Pre-publication
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) has issued a request for proposals to develop procedures to (1) determine the acceptable levels of bridge foundation movements based upon superstructure tolerance to total and differential movements considering service and strength limit states, and (2) propose revisions to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Load Resistance Factor Design…
AASHTO Journal, 19 April 2013 Michigan’s New International Trade Crossing hit another milestone last week after obtaining a federal permit needed to move the project forward. The bridge is expected to enhance the $70 billion-per-year trade relationship between Canada and the State of Michigan. “This is all about jobs for today and tomorrow,” Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said in…
Concrete Repair Bulletin, March / April 2013 International Concrete Repair Institute Article by Lorella Angelini According to the National Bridge Inventory, there are more than 600,000 highway bridges in the United States. Most of these bridges (98%) are owned by state and local governments, whereas the remaining 2% are federally or privately owned. The average age of these bridges…
The Maryland State Highway Administration has released a report that presents a framework for developing a system that tracks, records, evaluates, analyzes, and reviews soil slope failure and remediation data by using a GIS database and a collective overlay of maps. Read the Report
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 441: High Performance Concrete Specifications and Practices for Bridges documents the types of specifications and practices used by state transportation agencies to produce high performance concrete for bridges. The report also identifies specifications and practices reported as having improved concrete performance and those that have been less successful. Read the NCHRP Synthesis…
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