Multi-beam box girder bridges have been applied widely throughout the world for many years. However, the cracking of longitudinal joints between the box girders always leads to reflective cracking of the bridge decks during the service period and thus finally affects the safety and durability of the actual bridges. An embedded steel plate (ESP) strengthening method was presented by introducing carbon-A/-B glue to reinforce the longitudinal joints of old multi-beam box girder bridges for this problem. In order to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed method for actual bridges, an old multi-beam box girder bridge was reinforced, and structural parameters including strain, frequency, and deflection were obtained by adopting field tests before and after strengthening. In addition, the corresponding finite element (FE) model of the background bridge was also set up using ANASYS 18.0 to analyze the strengthening process. Analysis results of the actual bridge and FE model indicate that structural stiffness and load lateral transferring performance between the box girders were enhanced after ESP strengthening. Therefore, this proposed strengthening method can be used to improve the mechanical performance of multi-beam box girder bridges and provide reference for such bridge reinforcement.
Keywords: ESP strengthening; field test; load lateral transferring performance; multi-beam box girder bridge; structural stiffness.