Bending Capacity of Orthotropic Composite Bridge Deck with T-Shaped Steel Ribs

A new type of steel-concrete composite deck is proposed in this paper. The new composite bridge deck comprises the orthotropic steel plate with T-shaped steel ribs and the concrete, adjoining steel plate and concrete overlay together with studs. The steel plate can play the role of framework for the concrete overlay and save the on-site construction time. The new type composite deck can eliminate the problems of fatigue failure and pavement failure,compared with conventional orthotropic steel deck system.

For the structural type of thiscomposite deck is not used in the actual bridge and its mechanical performance are not revealed in literatures, in this paper two full-scalespecimens with T-shaped ribs were designed and fabricated. The mechanical behaviour of the new orthotropic composite deck was tested. Particularly, their bending capacity in sagging and hogging zone was carefully investigated. In the experiment, the load-deflection relation, the load-slip relation, concrete strains and steel strains were tested. The static load test proves that the bending capacity of the composite bridge deck was high and the elastic-plastic performance was obvious. The test result proved that the orthotropic composite bridge deck with T-shaped ribs behaves excellent bearing capacity and can be used in bridges.