Majid Sadoughi Yarandi - Doctoral Candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
Murat Saatcioglu - Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada,

Experimental research has been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of external prestressing as a seismic retrofit methodology for reinforced concrete bridge columns. The retrofit technique involves external prestressing concrete columns in transverse direction to improve their seismic performance.Rectangular columns with spliced longitudinal reinforcement have been tested with and without seismic retrofitting. It was observed that external prestressing improved bond between concrete and reinforcement in the splice region and resulted in improvements in inelastic column deformability. The paper outlines the experimental program employed and the test results obtained.