Bearing Replacement for Prestressed Concrete I-Girder Bridges

This paper deals with the jacking procedure for the replacement of prestressed concrete I-girder bearings, without damaging the superstructure. The finite-element method-based analysis procedure to compute the jacking force and overall jacking sequence for the girders is proposed. The proposed method takes into account the stress concentration at the loaded area on the girder and the behavior of superstructure due to the jacking force. An analytical equation is proposed to compute the allowable jacking force considering the bursting stress induced at the loaded area on the girder. On the other hand, the overall jacking sequence to lift the superstructure for the bearing replacement is determined by considering the response of the superstructure being jacked. This paper also includes an illustrative example of a jacking procedure for a prototype prestressed concrete I-girder bridge.