Research in effective temperature difference of concrete box girder bridge

The temperature data of a post-tensioned continuous concrete box-girder bridge have been monitored for five years. Based on the measured data, the temperature in the different positions of the concrete box girder was systemically analyzed to extract the effective temperature. A method for predicting the extremum value of the effective temperature of concrete box girder was proposed by use of the extrema analysis and curve fitting based on the temperature in the different positions of the concrete box girder. The coefficient of determination of the effective temperature curve is 0.9619. Then the effective temperatures of the box girder in different months were developed. The relationship is quite useful in estimating the effective temperature difference in concrete box-girder.