Louis N. Triandafilou, Federal Highway Administration
The January/February 2002 issue of HPC Bridge Views described the renewal of the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) High Performance Concrete (HPC) Technology Delivery Team, with a focus on the field delivery of HPC technology. The team has been very busy with many activities since then. They have coordinated and presented workshops to assist state departments of transportation (DOT) with HPC implementation. They have developed and are maintaining a Community of Practice website. In 2004, they completed a comprehensive national survey of state DOT implementation of HPC. The survey results have been distributed to all states and Local Transportation Assistance Program Centers and are posted on the FHWA HPC website.
The latest product developed by the team* is an extensive HPC Structural Designers’ Guide. Each section of the guide is authored by the facilitators of the respective topic areas that appear on the HPC website. The result is a thorough state-of-the-practice document covering all elements of HPC technology for bridges.
Objective
The main objective of the guide is to provide a source of information to structural designers for the design and construction of highway bridges and related structures using HPC. The guide will be updated periodically to keep pace with the latest developments in HPC, particularly those of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and industry organizations such as the American Concrete Institute, the American Segmental Bridge Institute, the National Concrete Bridge Council, the Portland Cement Association, the Post-Tensioning Institute, and the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute.
Scope
The scope of the guide includes all aspects of developing and producing HPC with desirable and beneficial characteristics for the transportation community.
After the introduction, Section 2 discusses the topic of HPC implementation in the United States highway infrastructure and provides an historical review of its development. Section 3 addresses the characteristics and grades of HPC for various applications and environments. Section 4 is devoted to recently completed national research and ongoing testing into the next generation of HPC, along with web links to state DOT research reports. Section 5 highlights the material properties of HPC that are important to owners and designers in assuring long-term structural performance. Section 6 provides guidelines for developing HPC mix designs and proportioning of materials.
Section 7 focuses on the fabrication, transportation, and erection of precast, prestressed HPC beams. Section 8 applies to cast-in-place HPC construction in substructures and superstructures, with special attention to the construction of bridge decks. Section 9 identifies the most suitable instrumentation that can be used for field measurements and recording of strains, deflections, rotations, accelerations, and temperatures of HPC members. Section 10 provides cost information and methods for assessing the cost-effectiveness of HPC with guidelines for estimating initial construction cost and life-cycle cost. Finally, Section 11 provides an overview of several HPC projects across the United States with lessons learned and contact information or web links for further details.
More Information
The HPC guide is available on CD-ROM from the author at 410-962-3648 or [email protected] and has been posted on the FHWA HPC website. Questions or comments on the guide are welcomed and may be directed to the author. The FHWA web site address is http://knowledge.fhwa.dot.gov/hpc.
*The author gratefully acknowledges the substantial effort made by HPC Team members, and by Ms. Deborah Vocke, Marketing Specialist of the FHWA Resource Center – Baltimore, in completing the guide.