A section of a poststressed twin box concrete bridge is instrumented for continuous recording of temperatures within the concrete and of environmental parameters outside. The recorded data are processed with the aim of presenting it in the form suitable for analysis of similar bridges for thermal effects. It is found that the necessary data can be represented through only two design variables, namely maximum differential temperature DTMAX and base temperature BT. Analytical expressions are derived which give vertical temperature profiles as function of DTMAX and environmental parameter insolation. The value of the average temperature is similarly obtained from empirical expressions which are functions of the two design variables and environmental parameter ambient air temperature. The derived expressions correlate satisfactorily with the measured data, however further research is required to test the effect on stresses and curvatures. A flow chart is given showing main steps in design.
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Churchward et al. (1981) studied this question.