Influence of substructure height on fully integral abutment bridge in sand

Nowadays, many simply supported bridges constructed all over the world have been affected by the durability problems, especially broken expansion joints and damaged bearings. In order to resolve fundamentally the durability problems of existing bridges during their service life, the concept of integral abutment bridge came out. In this paper, the retrofit technology with the concept of integral abutment bridge was analyzed, based on a simply supported bridge “Viadotto Serrone” in Italy. The corresponding finite element models of the existing jointed bridge and four types of fully integral abutment bridges after retrofit were built by Sap2000. Using the finite element model, the sensitive analysis choosing the substructure height as the critical influential factor was carried out. Some regulations obtained can be adopted as the guideline of this retrofit technology.