| The United States Department of Transportation (US-DOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) initiated in 2009 the Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) program to gather high-quality data on a representative sample of bridges over a twenty-year period of time. The goal of this program is to quantify how bridges behave during their service life while being exposed to different types of loadings and deterioration due to corrosion, fatigue and various climate conditions along with their corresponding maintenances. The data gathered will result in the creation of databases of high quality data, acquired through long-term instrumentation, to be used for improved design practices and effective management of infrastructures by employing best practices for maintenance. As part of the LTBP Program two integral abutment bridges, a California Bridge near Sacramento, CA and a Utah Bridge near Perry, UT, were selected to be monitored for temperature changes as well as to undergo periodic live-load testing. Live-load testing included slowly driving a truck over the bridges.;The bridges were instrumented to collect test data and use it to calibrate a finite-element model. This finite-element model was used to determine the actual bridge behavior and compare it with the AASHTO LRFD Specifications.;This thesis also examined how different parameters such as thermal gradients, mean temperature, and end-rotation affect these two integral abutment bridges. |
