Experimental Testing of Controllable Damping Devices toward Extending the Lifespan of Existing Highway Bridges (NEES-2008-0623)

<p><strong>Title</strong>: Experimental Testing of Controllable Damping Devices toward Extending the Lifespan of Existing Highway Bridges (NEES-2008-0623)</p> <p><b>Year Of Curation: </b>2013</p> <p><b>Description: </b>Highway bridges are a critical component of the US transportation system and the transportation system within the state of Connecticut. These structures are expected to endure years of dynamic loading with relatively little maintenance and attention. The recent tragedy of the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a reminder that bridge inspection, monitoring and protective systems are indeed critical to our society. Here in Connecticut the I-95 Mianus River Bridge collapse nearly 25 years ago in Greenwich, is a reminder of our own susceptibility to ageing infrastructure. Highway bridges in Connecticut are ageing and a large portion of the infrastructure, as seen in Figure 1, is between 40-50 years old (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/yrblt06.htm). As expected, the percentage of structurally deficient bridges in Connecticut increases with age. Whereas 5% of the 5-10 year old bridges are structurally deficient over 25% of the 75-80 year old bridges are classified structurally deficient, a reflection of the service life of bridges being exceeded. The service life of highway bridges here in Connecticut can be extended through the innovative application of controllable hardware with two goals in mind: (1) reducing the peak stress in the critical elements of the bridge due to heavy truck traffic using structural control; and (2) supplementing and enhancing a successful vibration-based bridge monitoring program to more accurately evaluate the structural health of the bridge infrastructure. This project builds upon a prior Connecticut Cooperative Highway Research Program (CCHRP) funded project (JH 06-3) which examined analytically the structural preservation of highway bridges in Connecticut through the application of controllable stiffness and damping devices to provide both structural control and improved health monitoring. The results of this prior project will be expanded and the performance and capabilities of large-scale controllable Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluid dampers will be experimentally verified using real-time hybrid simulation conducted at Lehigh University NEES facility.These hybrid tests will experimentally verify the ability of large-scale semiactive control technology to reduce the dynamic response of highway bridges with a series of tests conducted for varying excitations, damper control strategies, and simulated bridge models. </p> <p><b>Award: </b>Connecticut Cooperative Highway Research Program</p> <p><b>PIs & CoPIs: </b>Richard Christenson</p> <p><b>Dates: </b>July 29, 2008 - March 01, 2010</p> <p><b>Organizations: </b>University of Connecticut, CT, United States</p> <p><b>Facilities: </b>University of Connecticut, CT, United States,Lehigh University, PA, United States</p> <p><b>Sponsor: </b>Connecticut Cooperative Highway Research Program -</p> <p><b>Keywords: </b>Bridges,Damping</p> <p><b>Publications: </b><br /> Shelley Plude, "Real-Time Hybrid Simulation of a Complex Bridge Model with MR Dampers Using the Convolution Integral Method"</p> <nb:citations></nb:citations>