Recommendations to Strengthen the Old Bridge without Demolishing the Bridge

Bridge 1
RECOMMENDATIONS TO STRENGTHEN THE OLD BRIDGE WITHOUT DEMOLISH THE
BRIDGE
A Research Paper on Bridge By
Student’s Name
Name of the Professor
Institutional Affiliation
City/State
Year/Month/Day

Bridge 2
INTRODUCTION
Strengthening of concrete bridges or structures in the field of structural maintenance is an
important task. Increasing the capacity of present operational elements is the main objective of
carrying out strengthening. This task is important since the bridges are not considered safe
resulting from increased load.
Methods
The two methods used in the strengthening of bridges include;
 Using steel plate
 Using Fiber reinforced polymer (Mazzolani, 2013)
a) Strengthening using Steel plate
The use of steel plate is one of the commonly used materials during strengthening. It is
necessary since it increases the shear and flexural capacity of the reinforced concrete beam.
Readily available, high tiredness strength, constant material properties, cheapness and easy to
work makes the steel plate popular when strengthening as depicted from the mentioned features.
In the year 1960, the investigation concerning the structures strengthened using this method
began and this type of method had been applied in strengthening both bridges and buildings in
numerous countries such as United Kingdom, Poland, France, Japan, Belgium, South Africa and
Switzerland (Reid, 2012).
The most commonly used method of plating is gluing steel plates to the tension faces of
beams whereby at this stage, the plate is at its utmost extremity from the area of compression
whereas the composite action is at its maximum. However, maintenance of composite action
between glue, concrete and the plate will be done until failure. This method efficiency depends
on bonding methods between existing beam, preparation of the surface and steel plate, therefore