Research on Mechanical Properties of New Orthotropic Steel Bridge Deck

Aiming to resolve two main distresses of traditional orthotropic steel bridge deck such as the welding fatigue crack and the premature damage of pavement, this paper proposes a new kind of orthotropic steel bridge deck based on corrugated steel plate. The fundamental elements of this new deck include a steel plate in the upper layer, a corrugated steel plate in the middle layer which give a role of U-type rib in the traditional bridge deck, and a steel plate in the lower layer. Besides the fundamental structure of steel deck, a thin layer of reactive power concrete (named as RPC) is conceived to be paved on the steel deck. This paper mainly analyzes the mechanical properties of this new deck such as the transverse load transfer path and the hot spot stress, the mechanical properties comparison is also completed between this new orthotropic steel deck and the traditional one. The research shows that the mechanical properties of global deformation and local stress for the new orthotropic steel deck are much advanced than the traditional one.