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A Viscoelastic Model for the Long‐Term Deflection of Segmental Prestressed Box Girders
Author(s) -
Beltempo Angela,
Bursi Oreste S.,
Cappello Carlo,
Zonta Daniele,
Zingales Massimiliano
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
computer‐aided civil and infrastructure engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.773
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1467-8667
pISSN - 1093-9687
DOI - 10.1111/mice.12311
Subject(s) - creep , girder , structural engineering , deflection (physics) , viscoelasticity , prestressed concrete , constitutive equation , finite element method , shrinkage , box girder , term (time) , nonlinear system , engineering , materials science , composite material , physics , quantum mechanics , optics
Most of segmental prestressed concrete box girders exhibit excessive multidecade deflections unforeseeable by past and current design codes. To investigate such a behavior, mainly caused by creep and shrinkage phenomena, an effective finite element (FE) formulation is presented in this article. This formulation is developed by invoking the stationarity of an energetic principle for linear viscoelastic problems and relies on the Bazant creep constitutive law. A case study representative of segmental prestressed concrete box girders susceptible to creep is also analyzed in the article, that is, the Colle Isarco viaduct. Its FE model, based on the aforementioned energetic formulation, was successfully validated through the comparison with monitoring field data. As a result, the proposed 1D FE model can effectively reproduce the past behavior of the viaduct and predict its future behavior with a reasonable run time, which represents a decisive factor for the model implementation in a decision support system.