Virginia Adjacent Member Connection for Prestressed Concrete Box Beams and Voided Slabs

摘要

The conventional partial depth grouted shear keys for prestressed concrete adjacent members have been known to fail in many of these bridges. The failure leads chloride laden water to seep through the joint, where it can corrode the reinforcement and prestressing strand. Failed keys also lead to poor load sharing which in turn could result in beams carrying more load than that for which they were designed. The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) together with Virginia Tech developed an innovative connection, Virginia Adjacent Member Connection (VAMC), which greatly improves the mechanism of the load transferring of the connection between the adjacent prestressed concrete box beams or voided slabs and the durability of the connection. A special concrete, Very High Performance Concrete (VHPC), was developed for the VAMC to significantly reduce the lap splice length of the reinforcing steel in the VAMC.