Bridge to the future
Bridge to the future (Length 1:23)
We’re very interested in looking not just at the current state of the art, what we’re doing today, but looking at blue–sky types of things where we’re going to have to be looking at the future. How we can design structures that to be more efficient with materials. How can we keep existing structures in service longer than what they might have originally been intended to serve? And some of the materials we’re looking at are materials like carbon–fiber reinforced polymers, which are very lightweight, high–strength materials that we use to bond on the reinforced concrete to provide supplemental strength. They are materials that are fairly new but that are starting to see applications in service. And we’re looking not only at how well they’ll perform today but how well they’ll perform in the future. One of things that we’re expecting structures to do is last over time. And bridges in particular are out in the environment, and they’re subjected to freezing and thawing and rain and different thermal conditions. One of the unique things we have in our laboratory now is a very large environmental chamber that allows us to test not only the structural component but test the environmental component, so how it’s going to hold up over the long haul, especially with these new exotic materials that we don’t have a lot of experience with.