| The most used material for connecting precast bridge components, including prestressed
concrete girders in Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) is Ultra-High Performance
Concrete (UHPC). An alternative low-cost (non-proprietary) mix having a similar strength
was proposed as the material to be used in place of proprietary UHPC. The non-proprietary
mix had a 28-day compressive and split tensile strength of 18 ksi and 1.7 ksi, respectively. In
this research project, the pullout behavior of steel rebars for both proprietary UHPC and non-
proprietary UHPC is studied. In addition, the finite element models of the pullout behavior of
rebars in the closure pour are studied. The work presented in this thesis is to understand the
bond-slip behavior between rebar and both the proprietary and non-proprietary UHPC
materials and the associated stresses in the UHPC materials. The final results of this research
project showed that the non-proprietary UHPC is an adequate replacement of proprietary
UHPC for field-cast connection between precast bridge girders in Accelerated Bridge
Construction.
Keywords: Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC); Ultra High-Performance Concrete
(UHPC); Pullout test; Closure pour, Finite Element Modeling (FEM) |