Performance of Skew Reinforcing in Inverted-T Bridge Caps

Inverted-T bridge caps (ITBCs) have been widely used in most bridges in Texas in recent years. In some typical cases, the bridge caps are skew when two roads are not aligned in a perpendicular manner. The traditional method of flaring the transverse reinforcement out in skew ITBCs introduces significant complexity in design and during construction. An alternative is to provide skew reinforcing which will substantially reduce the design complexities and construction period. In this paper, three ITBC specimens were subjected to shear action to evaluate and compare the performance of ITBCs with traditional reinforcing with those with skew reinforcing. The three specimens include 0-degree skew, 30-degree skew with traditional reinforcing, and 30-degree skew with skew reinforcing, worthy of verification and quantification as demonstrated in this paper. The physical test results show that the skew reinforcement arrangement does not weaken the bridge cap’s capacity, and the structural performance remains almost the same as that of the traditional arrangement. In addition, the serviceability performance of skew reinforcements is better as compared with traditional reinforcements.