With specimen production and handling assistance from Coreslab Structures in Albuquerque, a New Mexico State University graduate student team has conducted flexural tests on large-scale prestressed girders designed with steel fiber-reinforced, ultra high performance concrete mixes, to be followed by similar testing on full-scale beams. Under Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering Brad Weldon, it aimed to a) advance the state’s bridge design procedures and extend current structures’ typical 50-year service life three-fold; and, b) obtain flexural behavior data to evaluate design procedures central to development of standardized codes. The initial specimens are the largest scale girders to date fabricated with the UHPC formulation, as previous tests had been limited to small rectangular beams.
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