Repair of corroded steel plate girders with ultra-high performance concrete

As the world's bridge infrastructure ages, there is a growing need to develop new, innovative repair and maintenance methods to rehabilitate these critical structures. Corrosion damage of steel bridges is a prevalent problem especially beneath leaking deck expansion joints. Implementation of conventional repair methods is expensive and disruptive to traffic. The University of Connecticut is developing a novel repair method by encasing corrosion damaged sections with ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) to restore bearing and shear capacity lost due to severe reduction of the plate thickness. This paper will present preliminary finite element analysis results and the design of a series of large-scale experiments conducted on full-scale corroded plate girders with the UHPC repair. The UHPC repairs have been designed to restore the as-built capacity of the girders. The goal ofthe study is to demonstrate the versatility and structural effectiveness of the UHPC repair.