Temperature gradients in lightweight aggregate concrete box-girder bridges

摘要

Currently, very few field-measured temperature data exist for actual bridge structures, particularly for large lightweight aggregate concrete box-girder bridges. In this paper, temperature data from an instrumented long-span single-cell box-girder bridge are presented. Measured positive and negative temperature gradients are compared with that prescribed by the US bridge design codes. Temperature gradients were observed to exceed the current specifications in a short measurement period. Measured temperature, which is expressed in terms of the difference between high and low temperatures, was found to track well with the empirical predictive equations proposed in the literature.