Construction and Testing of an Innovative Concrete Bridge Deck Totally Reinforced with Glass FRP Bars: Val-Alain Bridge on Highway 20 East
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 12, Issue 5
Abstract
The Val-Alain Bridge, located in the Municipality of Val-Alain on Highway 20 East, crosses over Henri River in Québec, Canada. The bridge is a slab-on-girder type with a skew angle of 20° over a single span of and a total width of . The bridge has four simply supported steel girders spaced at . The deck slab is a -thick concrete slab, with semi-integral abutments, continuous over the steel girders with an overhang of on each side. The concrete deck slab and the bridge barriers were reinforced with glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforcing bars utilizing high-performance concrete. The Val-Alain Bridge is the Canada’s first concrete bridge deck totally reinforced with GFRP reinforcing bars. Using such nonmetallic reinforcement in combination with high-performance concrete leads to an expected service life of more than . The bridge is well instrumented with electrical resistance strain gauges and fiber-optic sensors at critical locations to record internal strain data. Also, the bridge was tested for service performance using calibrated truckloads. Design concepts, construction details, and results of the first series of live load field tests are presented.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writers wish to extend special thanks to the following organizations for their contribution to this project: The Ministry of Transportation of Quebec (Quebec City, Quebec): bridge owner; Pultrall Inc., Division of ADS Composites Group (Thetford Mines, Quebec): supplier of the composite GFRP reinforcing bars; Roctest Ltd. (St. Lambert, Quebec): supplier of the fiber-optic sensors and its data-acquisition system; The Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of CanadaNRC (NSERC), Ottawa, Ontario, and ISIS-Canada (Network of Centres of Excellence), Winnipeg, Manitoba, for partial funding.
References
American Concrete Institute (ACI). (2003). Guide for the design and construction of concrete reinforced with FRP bars, ACI 440.1R-03, Farmington Hills, Mich.
American Concrete Institute (ACI). (2004). Guide test methods for fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs) for reinforcing or strengthening concrete structures, ACI 440.3R-04, Farmington Hills, Mich.
Benmokrane, B., El-Salakawy, E. F., Desgagné, G., and Lackey, T. (2004). “Building a new generation of concrete bridge decks using FRP bars.” Concr. Int., 26(8), 84–90.
Bradberry, T. E. (2001). “Concrete bridge decks reinforced with fiber reinforced polymer bars.” Transportation Research Record. 1770, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 94–104.
Canadian Standards Association (CSA). (2000). “Canadian highway bridge design code.” CAN/CSA-S6-00, Rexdale, Toronto.
Canadian Standards Association (CSA). (2002). “Design and construction of building components with fiber reinforced polymers.” CAN/CSA-S806-02, Rexdale, Toronto.
Canadian Standards Association (CSA). (2006). “Canadian highway bridge design code—Section 16, updated version for public review.” CAN/CSA-S6-06, Rexdale, Toronto.
El-Salakawy, E. F., and Benmokrane, B. (2003). “Design and testing of a highway concrete bridge deck reinforced with glass and carbon FRP bars.” ACI special publication, field applications of FRP reinforcement: Case studies, SP-215-2: 37-54, Detroit.
El-Salakawy, E. F., Benmokrane, B., Brière, F., Masmoudi, R., and Beaumier, E. (2003a). “Concrete bridge barriers reinforced with GFRP composite bars.” ACI Struct. J., 100(6), 815–824.
El-Salakawy, E. F., Benmokrane, B., and Desgagné, G. (2003b). “FRP composite bars for the concrete deck slab of Wotton Bridge.” Can. J. Civ. Eng., 30(5), 861–870.
El-Salakawy, E. F., Benmokrane, B., El-Ragaby, A., and Nadeau, D. (2005). “Field investigation on the first bridge deck slab reinforced with glass FRP bars constructed in Canada.” J. Compos. Constr., 9(6), 470–479.
Huckelbridge, A. A., and Eitel, A. K. (2003). “Preliminary performance observations for FRP reinforced concrete bridge deck.” American Concrete Institute (ACI) special publication, SP-215-7, field applications of FRP reinforcement: Case studies, Farmington Hills, Mich., 121–138.
ISIS Canada (2001). “Reinforcing concrete structures with fiber reinforced polymers.” ISIS-M03-01, The Canadian Network of Centers of Excellence on Intelligent Sensing for Innovative Structures, Univ. of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Martin, P., and Burke, J. (2002). “Semi-integral bridges: Movements and forces.” Transportation Research Record. 1460, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C.
Nanni, A., and Faza, S. (2002). “Designing and constructing with FRP bars: An emerging technology.” American Concrete Institute Concr. Int., 24(11), 53–58.
Pultrall Inc. (2004). “V-ROD™—Technical data sheet.” ADS Composites Group Inc., Thetford Mines, Quebec, ⟨http://www.pultrall.com⟩.
Rizkalla, S., Shehata, E., and Abdelrahman, A. (1998). “Design and construction of a highway bridge reinforced for shear and prestressed by CFRP.” Proc., American Concrete Institute Seminar on Field Applications of FRP Reinforcement to Concrete: Part I and Part II, Atlanta.
Steffen, R. E., Trunfio, J. P., and Bowman, M. M. (2001). “Performance of a bridge deck reinforced with CFRP grids in Rollinsford, New Hampshire, USA.” Proc., CCC 2001, FRP Composites in Construction, J. Figueiras, L. Juvandes, and R. Furia, eds., Porto, Portugal, 671–676.
Wilson, A. D. (2003). “Current status of high performance steel program: ISG plate.” ⟨http://www.steel.org/infrastructure/pdfs/paperTRBJan2004.pdf⟩
Yunovich, M., and Thompson, N. (2003). “Corrosion of highway bridges: Economic impact and control methodologies.” American Concrete Institute, Concr. Int., 25(1), 52–57.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 12 • Issue 5 • September 2007
Pages: 632 - 645
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 19, 2005
Accepted: Jul 19, 2006
Published online: Sep 1, 2007
Published in print: Sep 2007
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.