F. Michael Bartlett

• Western University

The Welland Canal is a constructed navigable waterway that links Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, bypassing Niagara Falls. Four distinct canals have been built over the last two centuries, and all four will be commemorated as a CSCE National Historic Site at the 2024 Annual Conference. The first Welland Canal, opened in 1829 and expanded in 1833, was...

This submission highlights the activities of the CSCE National History Committee (NHC) since the previous update in 2022. Five new National Historic Sites have been created in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island – there are now plaques in every province and territory of Canada. The “This Week in Canadian Civil Engineering History” i...

The growth of structural reliability theory and applications, along with a recognition of its role in guiding the structural engineering profession in addressing some of the most important issues in design of the built environment, represents one of the key engineering achievements during the past five decades. Structural reliability provides a uni...

CSA Standard A23.3:19 “Design of Concrete Structures” currently requires that the maximum yield strength, used in design calculations, be no larger than 500 MPa. The objective of the research, reported in this paper, is to determine whether the current limits for moment redistribution in continuous flexural members, Clause 9.2.4 of A23.3-19, are ap...

The American Society of Civil Engineers and the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering have just jointly designated “David Thompson’s Surveying and Mapping of the Northwest of North America” as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. David Thompson (1770–1857)—surveyor, map-maker, explorer, and fur trader for both the Hudson’s Bay and...

The Canadian Society for Civil Engineering will designate the Kinsol Trestle near Shawnigan Lake, BC, as a National Historic Civil Engineering Site in 2022. Canadian National Railways completed this massive structure, also known as the Koksilah River Trestle, in 1920. It is noteworthy for: (1) the scale and complexity of its original design and con...

This short submission highlights the activities of the CSCE National History Committee (NHC) since the previous update in 2020. New National and International Historic Sites have been created, specifically the Kinsol Trestle and David Thompson’s Surveying and Mapping of the Northwest of North America, respectively. Existing Historic Sites are now b...

The Britannia Mine, situated on the east shore of Howe Sound, 45 km (28 miles) north of Vancouver, produced more copper than any other mine in the British Empire between 1925 and 1930. Dr. A. A. Forbes originally discovered minerals there in 1888. When it ceased operations in 1974, it had produced over 517,000 metric tonnes (mt) of copper, 125,000...

The Pattullo Bridge over the Fraser River is the only major steel through-arch highway bridge remaining in British Columbia. Opened in 1937, the bridge replaced the narrow traffic lane above the railway tracks on the New Westminster Rail Bridge, improving vehicular traffic volumes. It connects the former BC capital of New Westminster with the regio...

This paper presents preliminary findings of a study of the flexural ductility of beams reinforced with ASTM A615 Grades 60 and 100, A706 Grades 60 and 80, or A1035 Grade 100 longitudinal steel bars. Moment–curvature relationships were generated for beams with reinforcement ratios varying between 0.3 and 1.5% with concrete compressive strengths betw...

The Middle Road Bridge, constructed in 1909 on present-day Sherway Drive to span Etobicoke Creek between Toronto and Mississauga, was recognized as a CSCE Civil Engineering Historic Site in 2009. The official CSCE plaque for this structure will be unveiled at the 2021 Annual Conference and subsequently installed on site. The Toronto firm Barber & Y...

Integral abutment bridges eliminate expansion joints by integrating the bridge superstructure with the abutments. The thermally induced movements of the superstructure are accommodated by flexural deformations of the supporting piles. Extensive numerical analyses have been conducted to clarify the structural response and soil-structure interactions...

Concrete overlays are widely used to rehabilitate bridge decks. This investigation presents parametric and sensitivity analyses of the mechanical strains due to restraint of shrinkage of the overlay that may cause it to crack. The parametric analysis identifies the significant variables and the sensitivity analysis quantifies the correlations betwe...

p>Proof load tests have the potential to confirm the structural safety of a component suspected of being substandard. Methodologies are available to revise the reliability index of the suspect component, after it passes a proof load test, that essentially assume that the probability that the actual resistance is less than the proof load is zero. Th...

Welded Wire Fabric (WWF) is increasingly used to resist shear in precast, prestressed bridge girders and to resist flexure in deck slabs. A resistance factor for Welded Wire Fabric is calibrated in accordance with CSA S408 Guidelines for the Development of Limit States Design Standards. Statistical parameters for WWF yield stress at 0.5% strain wer...

This paper investigates current procedures to compute instan-taneous deflections of reinforced concrete beams. Deflections predicted using the Branson Equation with the cracking moment computed using the full modulus of rupture, in accordance with ACI 318-14, when compared to deflections of 65 simply supported and continuous beams tested by others,...

Military vehicles frequently use civilian bridges. The loading effects of military vehicles, both wheeled and tracked, are specific and different than those of civilian vehicles in normal traffic. Calibration to determine appropriate load factors for military loading of civilian bridges has not been fully performed and the corresponding levels of s...

In military bridge evaluation, acceptable life-safety risk in crossings should be aligned with the acceptable life-safety risk of the associated military operation. A continuum of acceptable life-safety risk exists for military operations, thus a continuum of acceptable life-safety risk for military vehicles crossing bridges exists. The paper relat...

p>This paper briefly summarizes the development of the structural safety provisions of ACI 562-16 “Code Requirements for Assessment, Repair, and Rehabilitation of Existing Concrete Structures”. An initial proposal to specify factored load combinations that depend on the desired Reliability Level of the element being assessed was not implemented. In...

Bridge decks are subjected to deterioration due to chloride ingress or other factors. Concrete overlays are used to replace the unsound concrete or to extend the life span of new concrete bridge decks. Overlay shrinkage is restrained by the substrate beneath leading to premature ingress of chlorides, corroding the steel reinforcement and producing...

London Canada's Blackfriars Bridge, fabricated by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton Ohio, has been in service since 1875. The parabolic top chord of this tied-arch through-truss structure is built-up using seven shapes interconnected by stitch rivets. Recent inspections indicated extensive stitch rivet failures, raising concerns that the fu...

Military vehicles frequently use civilian bridges in theatres of operations. The loading effects of military vehicles, both wheeled and tracked, are specific and different than those of civilian vehicles in normal traffic. In capacity evaluation of civilian bridges to allow crossing of military vehicles, load factors from civilian codes with small...

Concrete decks are commonly rehabilitated using concrete overlays. Overlay shrinkage is restrained at the interface with the substrate. An analytical method is presented to compute the distribution of internal humidity and free shrinkage strains in the overlay and substrate for bridge decks with solid rectangular cross sections and therefore overco...

Deteriorated reinforced concrete highway bridge girders are regularly repaired by replacing existing concrete with new concrete, temporarily exposing the flexural reinforcement. The absence of bond between the concrete and the steel reinforcement makes it difficult to compute the flexural capacity of the girder and current code criteria provide no...

Conventional design and evaluation procedures usually classify steel through-truss bridges as single-load-path structures; however, their historic performance has demonstrated considerable structural resiliency. This paper presents a study of the Grand River Bridge, a Pratt through-truss bridge in Cayuga, Ontario, Canada, that systematically invest...

Deteriorated reinforced concrete highway bridge girders are regularly repaired by replacing existing concrete with new concrete, temporarily exposing the reinforcement. At this stage the capacity of the girder is uncertain because, while plane sections remain plane at each cross section, the requirement of compatible strains in the reinforcement an...

This is the first of two companion papers that analyse ten years of on-site monitoring data for the Confederation Bridge to determine the validity of the original wind speeds and wind loads predicted in 1994 when the bridge was being designed. The check of the original design values is warranted because the design wind speed at the middle of Northu...

This paper uses ten years of on-site monitoring data for the Confederation Bridge to derive wind loads and investigate whether the bridge has experienced its design wind force effects since its completion in 1997. The load effects derived using loads from the on-site monitoring data are compared to the load effects derived using loads from the 1994...

An analytical approach to compute restrained shrinkage effects on composite concrete deck – steel truss members is presented and validated using strains and deflections obtained by Brattland and Kennedy, who in 1986 tested two full-scale (11.8 m × 2.35 m in plan) composite trusses and companion drying specimens for approximately 90 d. The test-to-p...

A new first year design course at the University of Western Ontario uses team design projects to develop skills in the engineering design process, teamwork, design communication, and reflection. Students begin with a short 6-week mini-project, which is followed by an 18-week major design project. Each student is required to prepare an individual “S...

Although structures have been built using wood and concrete for centuries, there is still very little understanding on how the two materials can act as a single hybrid system. Recent progress has been made to integrate wood-concrete systems into heavy timber post-and-beam buildings and short-span bridges. There is a paucity of literature, however,...

Changes in the Canadian steel industry warrant a review of the steel resistance factor in CSA Standard S16 (formerly S16.1) "Limit states design of steel structures", originally calibrated in the landmark study by Kennedy and Gad Aly in 1980. This paper summarizes data collected in 1999 and 2000 to determine statistical descriptions of geometric an...

Changes in the Canadian steel industry warrant a review of the steel resistance factor in CSA Standard S16 (formerly S16.1) "Limit states design of steel structures", originally calibrated in the landmark study by Kennedy and Gad Aly in 1980. This paper presents statistical parameters for the bending, compression, and tension resistances of W, WWF,...

Current rehabilitation practices for aging, post-tensioned, voided-slab bridges typically reduce the geometric properties of the concrete cross section and so permanently increase post-tensioning stresses, change primary and secondary prestress moments, and create new primary and secondary moments because the original concrete restrains shrinkage o...

The mean load method of the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code is used to evaluate the shear and bending moment reliability of existing precast "type G" stringer bridges in Alberta that date from the late 1950s. The overall stringer population is categorized into distinct subpopulations using bridge-specific factors, including the degree of deteri...

Statistical parameters for the load effects and resistances of precast "type G" stringer bridges erected in Alberta since the late 1950s are presented to assist practicing engineers assessing similar bridges using the mean load method. The load effect data include unit weight data for normal weight and two lightweight concretes; traffic volumes, gr...

This paper presents the rationale for increasing the resistance factor for concrete in compression in the 2004 edition of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) standard A23.3, Design of concrete structures, from 0.60 to 0.65 and for precast concrete produced in CSA-certified plants from 0.65 to 0.70. The new values are supported by a probability...

Because upgrading a bridge is usually far more costly than incorporating extra capacity at the design stage, a different approach is appropriate. Clause 12 of CAN/CSA-S6-88, published in 1990, was developed specifically for evaluation. The development of Clause 12 is reviewed, as is the philosophy of varying the load factors based on how well the l...

Improvements to Clause 12 of CAN/CSA Standard S6-88 "Design of highway bridges" required the transformation of basic findings into a form suitable for use by evaluators. The number of dead load categories was reduced, and the rating equation was simplified. Rating factors calculated using the new criteria were checked against past practice. Practic...

Solutions are presented for the design of reinforcement for a wide range of holes in steel webs. Methods are derived for situations not covered in available published literature. Both elastic and plastic solutions are given for round holes, either unreinforced or reinforced with doubler or tripler plates. Welds and web stability are considered. A s...

Bridge deck rehabilitation typically involves removal of unsound concrete and placement of an overlay to restore the original geometry of the deck. A water-proofing membrane is typically applied after three to four days of drying to extend the life of the overlay by preventing the ingress of de-icing chemicals. Shrinkage of the overlay is restraine...

Full-scale destructive structural testing of a wood light-frame structure (WLFS) under simulated wind loads was conducted as part of a research programme on how low-rise buildings behave during extreme storms. The primary objective was to collect data for verification of 3-dimensional numerical structural modelling techniques presented in a paralle...

Blackfriars Bridge in London, Canada, is a wrought-iron bowstring-arch-truss bridge fabricated by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company of Canton, Ohio and erected in 1875. Although typical of the 19 km of wrought-iron bowstrings constructed by the company in this period, the bridge is one of the first to feature a ‘double-panel’ web diagonal arrangement...

Compression members in steel bridges designed before 1960 may be deficient according to current design code requirements and so require strengthening. This paper explores the response of steel wide-flange columns reinforced with new steel flange cover plates, accounting for: residual and locked-in dead-load stresses; different yield strengths of th...

The Confederation Bridge was the subject of extensive wind tunnel studies to define the response characteristics and the wind loads for design. The wind climate at the site was studied to better define the wind speeds for design of the completed structure as well as loads during construction. Both section model and full aeroelastic model techniques...

Two concrete T-beams reinforced with instrumented built-up hollow plain bars were tested to investigate the effect of flexural cracking and bond loss on the flexural and shear behavior. The beam with a flexural reinforcement ratio of 0.98% exhibited arch action due to bond failure that initiated when the applied load reached 60% of the failure load...

Separation factors were originally proposed by Lind in 1971 as a convenient way to uncouple demand from resistance in the ultimate limit state design equation. This facilitates rapid computation of load factors to achieve a desired target reliability index given the bias and variability of the load effect, or, independently, resistance factors to a...

A three-dimensional structural finite element model of a one-storey light-frame wood building is presented to evaluate the post-elastic behaviour and failure under idealized wind load. The results indicate that under high wind the vulnerable components are the connections between the roof trusses and exterior walls. Failure occurred after more than...

Mehanics-based relationships are established between bond stress bar force, slip at the unloaded end of the bar and slip along the length of plain steel reinforcing bars in pullout specimens. Two 200 mm (7.9 in.) diameter by 800 mm (31.5 in.) long pullout specimens reinforced with instrumented built-up hollow reinforcing bars were tested. Maximum p...

This paper presents the derivation and experimental validation of a mechanical model for unbonded seven-wire prestressing tendons with a single broken outer wire. The model has practical significance because corrosion of these tendons typically causes a single outer wire to fail first. The tendency for the tendon to deflect toward the broken wire c...

A mechanical model for unbonded seven-wire tendons with broken wires that accounts for the effects of interwire friction and contact forces between the tendon and surrounding concrete is derived. The model is an essential tool for predicting the response, and reliability, of unbonded posttensioned concrete structures containing corroded tendons wit...

Bond strength results from 252 plain bar pullout specimens are presented. Parameters investigated include: concrete compressive strength, bar size, bar shape, concrete cover; and bar surface roughness. All load-slip curves displayed a characteristic shape: the maximum tensile load occurred at a very small slip (∼0.01 mm) and the load then dopped as...

Testing of buildings and their components to failure under realistic wind loading is difficult under controlled conditions and presents a significant limitation in optimizing building performance. On one hand, the temporal and spatial variations of wind loads that occur in real wind storms are difficult to reproduce in a controlled fashion in full-...

The effectiveness of posted load limits in reducing annual maximum live load effects, thus enhancing bridge reliability, is investigated for 12 and 40 m simple span highway bridges. Novel analytical expressions are derived for event gross vehicle weight (GVW) distributions that account for violation of posted load restrictions, and the correspondin...

Typical rehabilitation procedures for posttensioned slab bridges involve removing concrete from the top surface of the bridge, replacing corroded reinforcement, and resurfacing with new concrete. These permanently change primary and thus secondary prestressing moments. Continuous posttensioned bridges often rely on secondary prestressing moments to...

Damage due to hurricanes and other windstorms has increased dramatically in recent years, incurring losses of life and property around the world. Funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Innovation Trust was awarded in 2004 for the “Three Little Pigs Project”, a CDN 7M (4.3 M €) facility to test full-scale houses and other...

Steel bridges designed according to the 1952 edition of CSA-S6 may be deficient according to current design code requirements and thereby require strengthening. This paper will explore the response of simple steel compression members (ex. existing columns, bents, bracing, truss members) reinforced by new steel cover plates. The goal is to develop a...

Monte Carlo simulation is used to quantify the reliability of reinforced concrete cantilever beams without stirrups designed using ASCE 7-98 load factors with strength reduction factors given in Appendix C of ACI 318-99 and the main body of ACI 318-02. Limit states corresponding to flexural failure neglecting strain hardening of the reinforcement,...

Plain reinforcement is common in historical concrete structures now in need of rehabilitation. Little information on the bond and development of plain bars is readily available to American or Canadian rehabilitation engineers: the current codes provide no guidance. This paper provides a review of historical test data relating to bond of plain reinf...

DuraKit Shelters Inc. has developed a modular house for emergency, temporary or semi-permanent occupation that uses corrugated fibreboard as the main structural material. The houses are marketed internationally and so must resist tropical cyclone wind loadings.Two full-scale shelters, measuring 4.9m×6.1m in plan, were subjected to static forces equ...

DuraKit Shelters Inc. has developed a modular house for emergency, temporary or semipermanent occupation that uses corrugated fibreboard as the main structural material. The houses are marketed internationally and so must resist tropical cyclone wind loadings. Two full-scale shelters, measuring 4.9 m x 6.1 m in plan, were subjected to static forces...

This paper documents six tests of unbonded seven-wire monostrand tendons with one or two broken outer wires. The objective of the study was to investigate experimentally the behavior of uncorroded monostrand tendons with broken wires and to assess the range of application of assessment procedures used in practice, such as the screwdriver penetratio...

The 2005 edition of the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) will adopt a companion-action format for load combinations and specify wind and snow loads based on their 50 year return period values. This paper sum- marizes statistics for dead load, live load due to use and occupancy, snow load, and wind load that have been adopted for calibration,...

The 2005 edition of the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) will adopt a companion-action format for load combinations and specify wind and snow loads based on their 50 year return period values. This paper pres- ents the calibration of these factors, based on statistics for dead load, live load due to use and occupancy, snow load, and wind loa...

This paper summarizes the mechanical properties of ASTM A992 steel as determined by tests of 207 flatstrap tensile test specimens at the University of Minnesota and the University of Western Ontario carried out in accordance with ASTM A370. Samples were obtained from 38 heats of steel from eight different shapes provided by three producers. The obj...

The mechanical properties of ASTM A992 steel were determined by tests of 207 flat-strap tensile test specimens at the University of Minnesota and the University of Western Ontario carried out in accordance with ASTM A370. Samples were obtained from 38 heats of steel from eight different shapes provided by three producers. The resultant data were an...

Results of tests on six 13 mm-diameter monostrand tendons, each subjected to one of three aggressive treatments to accelerate corrosion and with one or two broken outer wires, are presented. The remaining prestress fractions and wire strain distributions, when compared with data from tests of uncorroded 13 mm tendons with identical geometric and me...

A method for computing the variance of the strength of a compound member consisting of identical mass-produced ductile elements is presented that accounts for correlation between the strengths of the individual elements. The individual element strengths are represented as a first-order, zero-mean, autoregressive time series and the associated varia...

East Brough's Bridge in London, Ontario, a steel Pratt through truss erected in 1922, was demolished for subsequent replacement in the summer of 2000. Approximately 100 tensile-test coupons were obtained from sound angle, channel, and plate material in the built-up top chord, bottom chord, vertical, and diagonal members of the truss. Engineering pr...

TO facilitate applications of road penetration radar and other nondestructive testing technologies on roads, an apparatus was developed for the measurement of complex permittivity of construction materials. The system consists of an automatic network analyzer, a sample holder, coaxial cable connections, and data processing software. The sample hold...

The variation of in-place strength in a structure is due to within-batch variation, batch-to-batch variation, systematic within-member strength variation, and systematic between-member strength Variation. Batch-to-batch variation is particularly significant for cast-inflate structures and may either inflate the within-member variation if each membe...

A two-step method for converting a concrete core compression test result to the in-place strength of the corresponding volume of concrete is presented. The strength of a non-standard core is first converted to the equivalent strength of a standard core, and then the standard core strength is converted to the equivalent in-place strength. Strength c...

When the author joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Western Ontario, his teaching intentions were greatly influenced by eight years work experience with structural engineering consulting firms. His original objective was to bring the real world into the classroom, to illustrate structural engineering wi...

The facility performance requirements for the Confederation Bridge specified that the bridge be designed using load and resistance factors developed specifically for the site. This paper reviews the derivation of these factors for both the ultimate limit states and the serviceability limit states.

A procedure for the determination of concrete strength value from core strength data is described. The procedure involves (a) planning of the scope of the testing program, (b) procuring and testing of cores, (c) conversion of core strength to equivalent in-place strengths, (d) identification of low outliers in the set of equivalent in-place strengt...

An experimental investigation involving 287 concrete core specimens obtained from large beams cast from 45 to 90 MPa (6500 to 13,000 psi) ordinary portland cement concretes is described. The data indicate the effect of variations of core size and test moisture condition on the measured compressive strength of cores from elements made of high-perfor...

Data are analyzed to determine the effect of the specimen length-to-diameter ratio (l/d) on the magnitude and precision of the compressive strength of concrete cores. The data represent strength tests of 758 core specimens, all 4 in. in diameter, obtained from 10 different elements cast from ordinary portland cement concretes with strengths between...

In accordance with the provisions of ASTM C 42-90 and ACI 318-89, it is current practice to either dry concrete core specimens in air for 7 days or soak them in lime-saturated water for at least 40 hr before they are tested. In this paper, the effect of moisture condition on the strengths of mature cores obtained from well-cured elements is investi...

The 1990 version of Clause 12 'Existing Bridge Evaluation' of CAN/CSA-S6 'Design of Highway Bridges' permits the evaluator to assess the material grade in an existing bridge using a simple Bayesian technique. Bayesian techniques are compatible with familiar decision-making strategies and are useful when decisions must be made on the basis of limite...

Damage due to hurricanes and other windstorms has increased dramatically in recent years, incurring losses of life and property around the world. Houses are the most common structures and are also the most affected structures during extreme events. They are complex because of their highly redundant, yet vaguely defined, structural systems. A new fu...

Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Civil Engineering. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 1994.