The final subject to be mentioned is the resurgence of studies of composite steel concrete horizontally curved steel girder bridges. A just completed project at the University of Minnesota monitored the stresses and the deflections in a skewed and curved bridge during all  phases of construction, starting from the fabrication yard to the completed bridge.~ Excellent correlation was found to exist between the measured stresses and deformations and the calculated values. The stresses and deflections during construction were found to be relatively  small, that is, the construction process did not cause severe trauma to the system. The bridge has now been tested under service loading, using fully loaded gravel trucks, for two years, and it will continue to be studied for further years to measure changes in performance under service over time. A major testing project is being conducted at the Federal Highway Administration laboratory in Washington, DC, where a half-scale curved composite girder bridge is currently being tested to  determine its limit states. The test-bridge was designed to act as its own test-frame, where various portions can be replaced after testing. Multiple flexure tests, shear tests, and tests under combined bending and shear, are thus performed with realistic end-conditions and restraints. The experiments are also modeled by finite element analysis to check conformance between reality and prediction. Finally design standards will be evolved from the knowledge gained. This last project is the largest bridge research project in the USA at the present time.

    From the discussion above it can be seen that even though there is no large expansion of the nation's highway and railroad system, there is extensive work going on in bridge research. The major challenge facing both the researcher and the transportation engineer is the maintenance of a healthy but aging system, seeing to its gradual replacement while keeping it safe and serviceable.
 
2. Research on steel members and frames
  There are many research studies on the strength and behavior of steel building structures. The most important of these have to do with the behavior and design of steel structures under severe seismic events. This topic will be discussed later in this paper. The most significant trends of the non-seismic research are the following:

"Advanced" methods of structural analysis and design are actively studied at many Universities, notably at Cornell, Purdue, Stanford, and Georgia Tech Universities. Such analysis methods are meant to determine the load-deformation behavior of frames up to and beyond failure, including inelastic behavior, force redistribution, plastic hinge formation, second-order effects and frame instability. When these methods are fully operational, the structure will not have to undergo a member check, because the finite element analysis of the frame automatically performs this job. In addition to the research on the best approaches to do this advanced analysis, there are also many studies on simplifications that can be easily utilized in the design office while still maintaining the advantages of a more complex analysis. The advanced analysis method is well developed for in-plane behavior, but much work is yet to be done on the cases where bi-axial bending or lateraltorsional buckling must be considered. Some successes have been achieved, but the research is far from complete.

Another aspect of the frame behavior work is the study of the frames with semirigid joints. The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) has published design methods for office use. Current research is concentrating on the behavior of such structures under seismic loading. It appears that it is possible to use such frames in some seismic situations, that is, frames under about 8 to 10 stories in height under moderate earthquake loads. The future of structures with semi-rigid frames looks very promising, mainly because of the efforts of researchers such as Leon at Georgia Tech University, and many others. 钢筋混凝土结构研究英文文献和翻译(2):http://www.751com.cn/fanyi/lunwen_2833.html