Design and Field Testing of a First Continuous Slab-on-Girder Bridge with a Hybrid GFRP–Steel-Reinforced Bridge Deck in Canada
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 25, Issue 8
Abstract
This paper introduces field tests of the first continuous multispan slab-on-girder bridge with hybrid glass fiber-reinforced-polymer (GFRP)–steel reinforcement in Canada. The bridge was constructed in 2012 on Chemin Dunant overpassing the extension of Highway 410 in Sherbrooke (Quebec). The bridge consists of three spans with a maximum span of 44.6 m and is a typical slab-on-girder bridge with three traffic lanes. The bridge cross section consists of five steel girders, 1.9-m depth, covered with a 200-mm-thick concrete slab. The deck slab was reinforced with hybrid GFRP–steel reinforcement with a top mat of GFRP bars and a bottom mat of galvanized-steel bars. The Ministry of Transportation of Quebec recommends using galvanized-steel bars instead of black-steel bars because the former has higher corrosion resistance. The amount of reinforcement was determined using the empirical design method based on a steel reinforcement ratio of 1.0% according to existing design codes . The bridge was examined under live-load field testing involving seven load cases of truck locations. The steel-girder deflection was measured, and the strains in the GFRP and steel bars over an intermediate bridge pier were recorded. The field test showed very low strains in the GFRP and steel bars. The visual field inspection over approximately 6.5 years revealed that the bridge performed well under normal traffic conditions, confirming the applicability of using hybrid reinforcement in continuous bridges. An analytical parametric study was conducted examining the effects of changing the top reinforcement bar diameter, top and bottom reinforcement spacing, the hybrid- or GFRP-reinforced deck slab, and the dimensions of the steel-girder cross section (noncompact). The study revealed that the empirical method is conservative and calls for an unreasonable amount of reinforcement. Accordingly, the flexural design method (sectional analysis) should be used for the negative moment section.
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Acknowledgments
This research received financial support from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the NSERC Research Chair in Innovative FRP Reinforcement for Sustainable Concrete Infrastructures, the Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in Composite Materials for Civil structures, the Fonds Québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT), the Ministry of Transportation of Quebec (MTQ), and the University of Sherbrooke Research Centre on Composite Materials (CRUSMaC). The authors are also grateful to CIMA1 (Sherbrooke, Quebec), the S.M. Group International (Sherbrooke, Quebec), Sintra (Sherbrooke, Quebec), and the technical staff of the structural laboratory at the University of Sherbrooke, especially Martin Bernard and Simon Kelly, for their assistance in instrumenting and testing the bridge.
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 25 • Issue 8 • August 2020
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 25, 2019
Accepted: Feb 14, 2020
Published online: May 22, 2020
Published in print: Aug 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Oct 22, 2020
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