| Prefabrication is a popular practice that has gained widespread use in the bridge engineering community. Often certain components of a bridge are prefabricated and then assembled at the job site. However, this report focuses on the possibility of prefabricating a box girder/slab unit and shipping the entire assembly to a job site, where only placement and transverse post-tensioning would be required to complete the construction. This could drastically reduce construction time, eliminating the need for lengthy and costly road closures.;The objective of the project was to evaluate through numerical simulations the feasibility of creating an entirely prefabricated composite box girder bridge system and employing such a system for highway bridges. This included evaluating the global response of the system, local response of the composite girder/deck units and joints, and the vibration characteristics of the resulting bridge systems. To ensure accuracy, the analytical models were checked against theoretical predictions and experimental data.;Results from the simulation studies of this work indicated that the prefabricated steel/concrete composite girder/deck units are a safe and viable system for short-span highway bridges. It was shown that acceptable joint closure could be maintained below the AASHTO post-tensioning limits. |
