1. Applying Ultra-High Performance Concrete to concrete bridge design to improve cost-efficiency Ryan Hickox George Mason University Civil and Infrastructure Engineering

2. Highway bridge program established in 2001 to determine bridge sufficiency in order to allocate government funding Concrete bridges are failing due to wear and poor maintenance The program to fix all of America’s bridges is proving to be too costly America’s Bridge Infrastructure Aging

3. UHPC is stronger, more lightweight, and has lower permissivity than high performance concrete Secret is steel fibers in concrete mix Disadvantages include a higher initial cost, longer mixing and settling time, and a lack of American companies that produce UHPC Ultra-High Performance Concrete

4. UHPC should become the standard for new bridge construction and repairs to existing bridges Advantages of UHPC would outweigh initial costs and production time Is there a way to reduce cost by reducing steel fiber while still retaining material advantages? Proposal

5. Produce concrete I-beams using UHPC with different percentages of steel fibers mixed in; note cost, weight, mixing time, and settling time Test I-beams in a lab to find shear strength to find what advantage, if any, there is to reducing steel fiber content Methods/Expected Results

6. Publish results Construct a bridge using UHPC with reduced fiber content Establish cost value of return on initial investment by reducing cost of maintenance Next Steps

7. Questions?