A Novel Steel-FRP Composite Emergency Bridge for Disaster Relief

Owing to recent extreme climate, typhoons, floods and earthquakes have become the largest natural disaster threat of natural in Taiwan over the years. Due to the above natural disaster, some bridges were damaged. Such as Typhoon Morakot in 2009, more than 100 bridges had been washed away, resulting in isolated mountain residential communities, and the inability to deliver emergency relief supplies. In order to provide quick emergency relief, the simple construction of a temporary bridge becomes critical for the transportation and delivery of food and medical supplies into the emergency disaster area. The objective of this paper is to present, (1) a novel bridge structure for a lightweight bridge with portable, reusable, and suitable capabilities for ease of transportation and construction using manpower, (2) versatile joints that combine bolts, welding, and adhesives for easy manufacture and rapid assemblage and (3) effective structural design techniques for increasing the bonding strength of joints and decreasing the deflection-to-span ratio.

Composite materials for footbridges and vehicular traffic applications have been widely used at overseas, but the rapid assemblage of bridges and lightweight requirements do not take into account in emergency bridge design. Therefore, they are not suitable for applying to the disaster relief applications. This paper focuses on the design and experiments of temporary composite bridge for disaster relief and tries to promote composite footbridge for disaster relief applications.