Ryan Hickox

George Mason University

Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

Applying Ultra-High Performance Concrete to concrete bridge design to improve cost-efficiency

Highway bridge program established in 2001 to determine bridge sufficiency in order to allocate government funding

Concrete bridges are failing due to wear and poor maintenance

The program to fix all of America’s bridges is proving to be too costly

America’s Bridge Infrastructure Aging

UHPC is stronger, more lightweight, and has lower permissivity than high performance concrete

Secret is steel fibers in concrete mixDisadvantages include a higher initial cost,

longer mixing and settling time, and a lack of American companies that produce UHPC

Ultra-High Performance Concrete

UHPC should become the standard for new bridge construction and repairs to existing bridges

Advantages of UHPC would outweigh initial costs and production time

Is there a way to reduce cost by reducing steel fiber while still retaining material advantages?

Proposal

Produce concrete I-beams using UHPC with different percentages of steel fibers mixed in; note cost, weight, mixing time, and settling time

Test I-beams in a lab to find shear strength to find what advantage, if any, there is to reducing steel fiber content

Methods/Expected Results

Publish resultsConstruct a bridge using UHPC with reduced

fiber contentEstablish cost value of return on initial

investment by reducing cost of maintenance

Next Steps

Questions?