Steven B. Chase, Federal Highway Administration
Significant progress has been made over the last decade in researching, developing, and deploying high performance concrete (HPC). This progress has been aided by FHWA’s promotion and demonstration of HPC in projects across the country. However, we must do more to reduce the number of substandard bridges and to anticipate future demands of the highway system.
Our vision is to get out in front of the bridge deterioration curve and stay there. Our strategy to realize this vision is a structures research and technology program with three thrust areas. The first emphasizes stewardship and management of our existing bridge inventory. The second focuses on ensuring the safety and reliability of new and existing bridges. The third and most exciting thrust area is The Bridge of the Future.
For the Bridge of the Future, we plan to research, develop and, in partnership with the states and industry, widely implement more durable and longer lasting bridges with fewer maintenance demands. In addition, these bridges will be able to be modified to accommodate changes in traffic or function much more quickly and in a far less intrusive manner than current technology allows. We plan to work to develop and deliver new generations of bridge systems that will provide unprecedented long-term performance. These systems will effectively use and combine high performance materials such as HPC into the most structurally efficient and cost effective systems.
The objective of this research initiative is to develop innovative bridge systems to meet the following performance objectives:
- 100-year service life with minimal maintenance
- A fraction of the current construction time
- Easily widened or adaptable to new demands
- Life-cycle costs, inclusive of user costs, at a fraction of current bridges
- Immunity to flooding, earthquakes, fire, wind, fracture, corrosion, overloads, and vessel collision
- Entire bridge from foundations to parapet designed and constructed as a system
- Lateral clearance greatly increased with longer spans
- Vertical clearance increased with shallower structures
- Constructibility to be as important as durability
- Design for easy inspection and maintenance
We recognize that these objectives will stretch our creative and technological capabilities but we plan to build upon a decade of research in high performance materials and to pursue the development of structural systems that will meet these performance objectives.
The Innovative Bridge Research and Construction Program (IBRC) will be our primary mechanism for pushing new technology. The IBRC has been very beneficial by incrementally introducing new technology into bridge construction, such as replacing steel reinforcement with fiber reinforced polymers or conventional concrete with HPC. The motto of the new IBRC program will be to “move beyond incrementalism.” The goal will be to demonstrate and spur the development of totally new and innovative bridge systems.
We also plan to broaden the scope of the IBRC to include strengthening, rehabilitation, repair, maintenance, and preservation technologies. The emphasis will be to deploy and evaluate those technologies that have the potential to become the new standards for the future and have potential application on thousands of bridges. In addition to the new IBRC, FHWA plans to introduce new demonstration projects that will include both educational and hands-on elements to help move technology from research and development into practice. If we are successful in developing and delivering bridge systems that meet the performance objectives stated above, we will have realized our vision of getting out in front of the bridge deterioration curve and staying there.
Further Information
For further information, contact the author at (202) 493-3038 or [email protected].