Through a Change Proposal by Facca Incorporated, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) approved the replacement of the as-tendered steel H-piles by newly designed prestressed/precast Ultra-High-Performance Concrete (UHPC) piles for supporting the west abutment of the Lily River Detour Bridge. The 300 mm (~12”) deep UHPC piles were designed and installed at the west abutment based on the previous successful development and testing of a tapered H-shaped pile at Iowa State University. The east abutment, as tendered, was designed to be supported by six steel H-shaped battered piles driven to bedrock. For the west abutment, six UHPC piles were produced and installed using the same batter. Since the site contained occasional boulders and the design intent to drive the piles to bedrock, the UHPC piles were fitted with steel shoes for the first time. All piles were successfully installed to reach the targeted load bearing capacities. After the replacement bridge was constructed, the detour bridge was removed and the UHPC piles were extracted to examine the conditions of the piles. This presentation will provide details of the innovative design of the piles, fabrication and driving of the piles, and lessons learned from analyzing the driving data and removal of the piles. Fellowship and Scholarship recipients. With the help of generous donors from the concrete community, the ACI Foundation awards high-potential undergraduate and graduate students in engineering, construction management, and other appropriate curricula.

The movement of ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) toward wide scale acceptance within the concrete industry has generated interest in developing improved test methods to provide quality assurance for this material. Most test methods currently used to measure the tensile behavior of ultra-high-performance concrete require specialized testing equipment that is not typically owned by precast or ready-mix production facilities. These test methods provide reliable data for quality assurance of newly developed concrete mixes, but they are impractical as quality-control tests, which would need to be performed for every UHPC placement. This paper presents the development of a simple and inexpensive test to measure tensile strength and ductility for UHPC and serve as a quality-control test. This method was developed from the double-punch test, commonly referred to as the “Barcelona test,” but has been revised to incorporate substantial changes to the loading and data collection requirements to eliminate the need for expensive, specialized equipment. It was determined that the modified test method could produce reliable results using a load-controlled testing procedure with manually recorded data points taken every 0.635 mm (0.025 inches) of vertical displacement for ductile concrete specimens. It was also determined that specimen surface grinding, loading rate, and punch alignment did not significantly influence the test results. However, the fabrication of the specimens, specifically the rate and method at which the molds were filled, had a significant effect on the results. Accordingly, any recommended standardized test method based off of this procedure should have requirements on specimen fabrication.

The development of low carbon footprint and high initial compressive strength binders for the precast industry is presented. Binders with a substitution of up to 75% of a normal Portland cement (CEM I) with a mixture of metakaolin and two different limestone additions were developed on mortars. Water/binder ratio reduction (down to 0.25) and thermal treatment (up to 50°C) have been applied to improve initial compressive strength (> 14 MPa at 8 hours). Pozzolanic reaction improved 28 days compressive strength (> 50 MPa). The most technically and environmentally performant binders have been applied to concrete. Concretes with low clinker contents have been produced to achieve the C25/C30 and C40/50 strength classes. Durability performances corresponding to XC4 were assessed via a performance approach (FD P 18-480). A wall with integrated formwork has been industrially manufactured which allowed a carbon footprint reduction of around 30% over its whole life cycle.

Due to a dynamic development of infrastructure, engineers around the world are looking for new materials and structural solutions, which could be more durable, cheaper in the life cycle management, and built quickly. One of prospective solutions for building small-span bridges can be precast lightweight concrete reinforced with glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) rebars. Thanks to prefabrication, it is possible to shorten the construction time. Using lightweight concrete affects structure weight as well as transportation costs. GFRP rebars can make the structure more durable and also cheaper in terms of life cycle management costs. The paper focuses on the fatigue performance of a real-scale arch (10.0 m (33 ft) long, 1.0 m (3.3 ft) wide, and 2.4 m (7.9 ft) high) made of lightweight concrete and GFRP rebars (LWC/GFRP) in comparison with an arch made of normal weight concrete and typical steel reinforcement (NWC/steel). The fatigue loads ranging from 12 to 120 kN (2.7 to 27 kip) were applied in a sinusoidal variable manner with a frequency of 1.5 Hz. This research revealed that the NWC/steel arch exhibited significantly better fatigue resistance when compared to the LWC/GFRP arch. Differences in the behavior of the NWC/steel and LWC/GFRP models under fatigue load were visible from the beginning of the research. The LWC/GFRP model was exposed to fatigue loads, resulting in gradual deterioration at an early stage. This degradation was evident through stiffness being progressively reduced, leading to increased displacements and strains as the number of load cycles increased. The model did not withstand the fatigue load and was destroyed after approximately 390 thousand load cycles, in contrast to the NWC/steel model, which withstood all 2 million load cycles without significant damages or the stiffness being decreased. However, the prefabricated lightweight concrete arches with composite reinforcement seem to be an interesting alternative of load-bearing elements in infrastructure construction.

A large number of bridges in the Netherlands have transversely post tensioned deck slabs cast in-situ between flanges of precast girders and were found to be critical in shear when evaluated by Eurocode 2. To investigate the bearing (punching shear) capacity of such bridges, a 1:2 scale bridge model was constructed in the laboratory and static tests were performed by varying the transverse prestressing level (TPL). A 3D solid, 1:2 scale model of the real bridge, similar to the experimental model, was developed in the finite element software DIANA and several nonlinear analyses were carried out. It was observed that the experimental and numerical ultimate load carrying capacity was much higher than predicted by the governing codes due to lack of consideration of compressive membrane action (CMA). In order to incorporate CMA in the Model Code 2010 (fib 2012) punching shear provisions for prestressed slabs, numerical and theoretical approaches were combined. As a result, sufficient factor of safety was observed when the real bridge design capacity was compared with the design wheel load of Eurocode 1. It was concluded that the existing bridges still had sufficient residual bearing capacity with no problems of serviceability and structural safety.