Development of a High-Performance Concrete Deck for Louisiana’s Movable Bridges: Numerical Study
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 22, Issue 7
Abstract
Louisiana has approximately 160 movable bridges, mostly in the southern part of the state. This places Louisiana among the states with the highest inventory of movable bridges in the nation. The typical deck systems in these movable bridges are steel grids. Records show that steel grids have had maintenance issues. An alternative ultrahigh-/high-performance concrete (UHPC/HPC) bridge deck system is proposed for Louisiana’s movable bridges. This system consists of precast waffle-slab deck panels, which are reinforced with glass-fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars as positive-moment reinforcement, and a two-way carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) mesh as top reinforcement. Several validated nonlinear finite-element analyses were performed to simulate the behavior of the precast panels from the onset of loading to failure. It is concluded that the precast concrete waffle slabs provide a viable alternative to steel grids by supplying load capacities that surpass service- and ultimate-level load demands and deflection capacities that are within code-specified limits.
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Acknowledgments
This study was sponsored by the Louisiana Transportation Research Center (LTRC). The authors thank the members of the project review committee for their comments and their thorough review of the work performed to date. The authors also thank Lafarge North America for donating Ductal to conduct the material characterization study. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 22 • Issue 7 • July 2017
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 1, 2016
Accepted: Jan 24, 2017
Published online: Apr 19, 2017
Published in print: Jul 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Sep 19, 2017
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