Nur Yazdani, a civil engineering professor at The University of Texas at Arlington, has received a three-year, $997,275 grant from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to evaluate the performance of selected deteriorating and aging highway bridges. His approach includes non-destructive evaluation (NDE), on-site load testing and computer simulation to help engineers determine the current condition of bridges and decide which need repair and how best to accomplish that.
Texas has the second-most bridges in the United States after California, 30% of which do not have sufficient height, width or capacity to handle the increasing volume and type of traffic using them. "The federal infrastructure bill has given TxDOT and local governments significant funding to apply toward upkeep and evaluation of bridges. They want to ensure that they are using the funding wisely to identify bridges that might have issues," Yazdani said. "We are happy to apply our findings from current and previous work to help TxDOT ensure that Texas bridges are safe and usable for years to come." Tasks include evaluating hybrid steel and concrete girder bridges and the partial composite action in prestressed concrete I-girder bridges. When existing concrete and…