Sustainable Construction in Arctic Climate – Residual prestressing in prestressed concrete structures

Background

The construction industry and built environment in Europe allocate half of their expenditure to repairs, maintenance, and remediation, indicating a significant economic impact due to aging infrastructure. With post-war infrastructure nearing its design life, there's an urgent need for thorough structural assessment procedures, particularly for crucial assets like bridges. Insufficient knowledge of structural conditions can endanger existing structures. Recent bridge collapses underscore the importance of accurate assessment, considering factors like extreme events, environmental deterioration, and time-dependent phenomena. Estimating prestressing force accurately is essential, studies comparing empirical measurements with design code predictions highlight the need for more accurate assessment methods. This has an important impact on structural performance, serviceability, and fatigue resistance. Therefore, regular monitoring is essential to mitigate risk and ensure safety.

Aim and objectives

The aim is to enhance sustainability by developing more refined methods for assessing the residual prestress which could reduce the number of bridges that need to be replaced or strengthened.

The objective is to deploy different destructive and nondestructive techniques on prestressed concrete structures to assess the loss of residual prestress and evaluate its impact on the residual life. These analyses involve non-linear finite element modelling, structural health monitoring, data processing and sensitivity analysis to identify critical parameters.

Facts

Financer: SCABEAC – INTERREG Aurora

Partners: LTU, University of Oulu, SINTEF, KUPA AS, Narvik University College
Financer: INTERREG Aurora

Timeline: 02-2023 to 12-2025

Principal Investigator: Gabriel Sas

Team members: Angélica Agredo Chávez, Jaime Gonzalez-Libreros

Dissemination

1)Agredo Chávez A (2022). On-site measurements and structural modelling for the assessment of residual prestressing: The Kalix Bridge. Master's thesis report, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. https://www.politesi.polimi.it/handle/10589/195800 External link.

2)Agredo Chávez, A., Gonzalez-Libreros, J.H., Sas, G., Elfgren, L., Bianchi, S., Biondini, F., & Kukay, B. (2022). Available Tests to evaluate Residual Prestressing Forces in Concrete Bridges. IABSE Symposium, Prague 2022: Challenges for Existing and Oncoming Structures, Prague, Czech Republic.

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?dswid=-7470&pid=diva2%3A1683865&c=1&searchType=SIMPLE&language=en&query=residual+prestressing+force&af=%5B%5D&aq=%5B%5B%5D%5D&aq2=%5B%5B%5D%5D&aqe=%5B%5D&noOfRows=50&sortOrder=author_sort_asc&sortOrder2=title_sort_asc&onlyFullText=false&sf=all External link.

3)Gonzalez-Libreros J, Wang C, Agredo Chávez A, Sarmiento S, Tu Y, Daescu C, Sas G (2022). Development of a bridge load test procedure for low temperature conditions. Int Conf Bridge Safety, Maintenance, Management, Life-Cycle, Resilience and Sustainability Proc IABMAS, Barcelona, Spain.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781003322641-68/development-bridge-load-test-procedure-low-temperature-conditions-gonzalez-libreros-wang-agredo-sarmiento-tu-daescu-sas External link.

4)G. Sas., L. Elfgren., C. Daescu., J. Gonzalez-Libreros., C. Wang., S. Sarmiento., A. Agredo., T. Larsson. & L. Nilsson. (2022). Testing of a prestressed concrete box girder bridge over the Kalix River. XXIV NCR Symposium 2022, Stockholm, Sweden.