Morris Bridge – PTH 23 – Manitoba

Manitoba Infrastructure (MI), the governing transportation body for the Province of Manitoba, completed a major bridge rehabilitation project in 2014/2015 on Provincial Trunk Highway (PTH) 23 in Morris, Manitoba. The bridge that crosses the Red River was constructed in 1968 and consisted of a steel-reinforced concrete deck acting compositely with four lines of haunched steel I-girders. Stantec Consulting Limited (Stantec) was retained to complete a detailed design for the rehabilitation of the bridge. The proposed rehabilitation included the replacement of the existing deteriorated concrete bridge deck utilizing full-depth and full-width precast prestressed concrete panels. These panels are connected with ultra-high performance concrete fill material known under commercial name Ductal. Since this was the first application of its kind in Manitoba, MI desired to have the structure instrumented in order to monitor the performance of the system.

The structural health monitoring (SHM) system was designed to perform four major monitoring tasks:
1. Bridge Weigh In Motion (BWIM).
2. Composite action between steel girders and concrete panels.
3. Arching action of concrete panels.
4. Load distribution between panels (Ductal joints performance).

The complete SHM system includes more than 120 sensors including strain gauges, LVDTs, and thermocouples. The SHM sensors installed in this project are classified as follows:
• Electrical Resistance Strain Gauge for measuring strains (Total of 105 gauges installed on concrete reinforcement and steel girders).
• Thermocouples for measuring temperature (Total of 8 gauges).
• Linear Variable Differential Transformers (LVDTs) (Total of 10 LVDTs).