Shear Behavior of Prestressed Concrete Girders and Structural Health monitoring using Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

This research deals with six Prestressed girders that were tested to observe the shear behavior and investigate the failure mode. Three of the girders had a top slab of eight inches and were constructed with TXDOT specifications. The other three were constructed without the top slab with AASHTO specification. These were tested for bond slip behavior and with minimum reinforcement. The primary objective was to investigate the type of failure in all the girders. It was found that all of them failed in web shear and none in bond slip. One of the girders also had Fiber Bragg Grating sensors on the inside surface to observe localized bond slip. This was compared to the global slip given by the conventional sensors which led to conclusions about using those sensors instead of the conventional ones for structural health monitoring.