Strengthening Bridges with Prestressed CFRP Strips

Abstract

Limitation of bridge’s carrying bearing capacity due to aging and deterioration is a common problem faced by road administration and drivers. Rehabilitation of bridges including strengthening may be applied in order to maintain or upgrade existing bridge parameters. The case studies of strengthening of two small bridges with high modulus prestressed CFRP strips have been presented in the paper. The first one - reinforced concrete slab bridge - and the other - composite steel-concrete girder bridge - have been successfully upgraded with quite new technology. In both cases the additional CFRP reinforcement let increasing of bridge carrying capacity from 15 till 40 metric tons. The CFRP strip prestressing system named Neoxe Prestressing System (NPS), developed by multi-disciplinary team and tested at full scale in Rzeszow University of Technology, has been also described in the paper.

Keywords

• bridge strengthening
• cfrp strips
• prestressing,