Major Rehab of Connecticut’s Largest Bridge

Gold Star Bridge Rehabilitation

Connecticut’s largest bridge structure, the Gold Star Bridge, carries I-95 Northbound over the Thames River. The structure consists of 34 spans including the main three-span continuous truss segment over the river, a total length of 5,930 linear feet (1.2 miles long), more than 506,000 square feet of deck area, and provides an 80-foot curb-curb roadway.

PRIME AE was engaged to provide structural engineering services to analyze, evaluate, and develop rehabilitation methods to strengthen the bridge to carry present-day design and permit loads, and to facilitate the continued safe and reliable use of the bridge long term.

The final design effort included; complex steel analysis of the truss spans, gusset plates, multi-nodal seismic analysis of the entire bridge, finite element modeling of the structure in LARSA 4D, and innovative retrofit detailing. The rehabilitation efforts are anticipated to be completed over three construction contracts with a combined construction estimate of $300 million.

34 spans

5k+ linear feet in length