Trung van Doan

BE (Hons 1)
Postgraduate Research Student
Centre for Advanced Structural Engineering



Department of Civil Engineering, Room 360
Phone: +61 2 8837 0809
Fax: +61 2 8837 0055
Email: T.Doan@civil.usyd.edu.au

Research project - Long-term Effects in Prestressed Concrete Box Girder Bridges

Supervisor: A/Prof Stuart Reid
Associate Supervisor: Hon A/Prof Rob Wheen


Large prestressed concrete structures are very sensitive to creep and shrinkage which normally induce large deflection effects. These effects can cause severe cracking generally leading to unserviceability and result in failure. Designers tend to rely on the simplified procedures contained in codes of practice for the estimation of service load behaviour. Such procedures usually oversimplify a complex problem and are often unreliable and conceptually misleading.

The aim of this project is to model, examine and predict creep and shrinkage effects in prestressed concrete box girder bridges. Different prediction models will be tried out and compared with actual deflections from a bridge. An assessment of the applicability of various models to prestressed concrete box girder bridges will be made.

It is hoped that this project will result in improvement of the design of concrete structures for long-term behaviour.

FEA model of a bridge

Bridge plan