The main goals of the proposed Small Grant Exploratory Research are: (a) to study performance of long span bridges subjected to blasts occurring on the deck and; (b) to develop technologies that can be used to harden these bridges economically to prevent their progressive collapse. The types of long span bridges included in the proposed study are suspension bridges (both anchored to the ground and self-anchored) and cable-stayed bridges. The deck systems to be considered in the study are the steel orthotropic and composite plate girders. The parameters varied in the study are material properties, type of deck, axial force in the deck and the size of explosive device. The expected results will be in the form of technologies that can be used to limit the damage to a small area of the roadway and to prevent global or partial collapse of the bridge span. Special care will be taken to ensure that no information on vulnerabilities of these bridges is released to the public. Instead, the public information will provide the bridge engineering community with the concepts and technologies that can only be used in a positive way to minimize the damage to these bridges and to prevent their catastrophic collapse.
