Hello everyone!
I just enrolled for a phd and need to determine what my research and thesis will be about. From the start I considered concrete bridges for research. There is an incredible opportunity in my vicinity where two concrete girder slab bridges will be built. Both bridges have two roughly 25m spans, but one bridge is an integral reinforced concrete construction, while the other one is a prestressed concrete construction with bearings on the abutments. This seems like a perfect opportunity to set up a thesis, put some monitoring instruments on the bridges and in a year or two draw a conclusion and see differences in reinforced concrete bridge and prestressed concrete bridge. Whatever the thesis is about the plan was to also do a numerical model of the bridges and see their behaviour using probably SOFiSTiK.
All of this is fairly overwhelming so I would like to ask all of you for help. I already looked up some dissertations but cannot decide what would be good to do here. I am open to all suggestions (creep, shrinkage, cracks, earthquake, etc.) with little guidance.
Thank you all very much for your time!
In warmer countries the temperature gradient in slab is significantly different then the same in girder. Due to this incompatible temperature gradient there are problems in slab and girder if they are monolithic.
Probably in colder regions similar situation can take place.
Om Prakash Chhangani Thank you very much for the answer! I may have poorly writen the title, the main girder of this bridge is slab built in one piece (center of the slab is a bit thicker, while there are cantilevers on both sides). There still might be some good ideas regarding temperature since it changes drastically over summer/winter where I live.
Probably one can do extensive experiments on the thermal mapping of this type bridge at various cross sections across the depth and resulting deformations in conjunction with creep and shrinkages
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