Southwest Jiaotong University • School of Civil Engineering

Bridge Engineering
Semester 2021-2022 (1) for Ethiopia class
Design Project

Date of Assignment: Friday, Sept. 24, 2022

Date of Submission: Friday, Dec. 24, 2022

Submission requirements:
(1) All of your project reports must be neatly and clearly handwritten or printed
in A4 paper.
(2) Your submissions shall be in hard copy when the course is delivered offline
or in electronic form, such as scanned copies, MS Word files, or PDF files,
when the course is delivered online.
(3) Late submissions will not be accepted.

Design of a Prestressed Concrete Girder Bridge

Problem Statement
A simply supported prestressed concrete girder bridge with the span length of 36.6 m (the
center-to-center distance between the supporting components) has been designed to support
HL-93 design vehicular live loading in accordance with the AASHTO LRFD Bridge Design
Specifications. The cross-section of the bridge is shown in Figure 1. The Thickness of the
deck slab is 0.23 m, and the depth of haunch at the bottom of the deck is 2.5 cm. The girder is
the AASHTO Type-VI I-shaped girder (see the Appendix 1 for the geometrical properties).
The girder is precast and fully prestressed with harped bonded steel strands, as shown in
Figure 2.
The material properties are in the following:

Deck concrete: f c  34.5 MPa (equivalent to Chinese C80)

'

Ec  2.8  104 MPa .

Girder concrete f c  55.2 MPa

'

Ec  3.6  10 4 MPa .
Beam concrete strength at release
f c'  48.3 MPa
Ec  3.3  104 MPa .
Prestressing steel: 15.2- mm, 1861.6-MPa low relaxation strands:
f pu 
1861.6 MPa.

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 f py  0.9 f pu  0.9 1861.6  1675.4 MPa
.
Eps  196500 MPa
.

Figure 1 The typical cross-section of the precast prestressed concrete bridge.

Figure 2 The profile of the prestressing strands.

Design tasks:
you are required to design the prestressing strands and check the strength and
serviceability of interior and exterior girders in the bridge, assuming it is going to carry
Chinese Highway-II design live loads in accordance with the Chinese Technical Standard
of Highway Engineering (JTG B01-2014) and Specifications for Design of Highway
Reinforced Concrete and Prestressed Concrete Bridges and Culverts (JTG 3362-2018).
Different span lengths are assigned to different work groups:
 L= 40 m for Group 1
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  L= 44 m for Group 2
Specifically, you are required to:
(1) Determine the bending moment envelope and shear envelope for the interior and
exterior girders
(2) Estimate the cross-sectional area of prestressing tendons and arrange the tendons
over the cross-section and along the span length.
(3) Calculate the prestress losses according to the Chinese specifications.
(4) Check the flexural strength at the midspan and ¼ span sections in the strength
limit state.
(5) Check the stress at midspan and ¼ span sections in the service limit state.
(6) Check the long-term deflections of the girders.

Note:
(1) Students are allowed to work in groups and each student must carry out at least one
design or analysis task.
(2) The geometrical properties of the AASHTO Type-VI I-beam is attached to this
document.
(3) The prestressing tendons are symmetrically harped at some place near the midspan, as
shown in Figure 2.
(4) All of calculations must be in accordance with Chinese design codes and
specifications.

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