Flexural Behaviour of Orthotropic Composite Bridge Deck

A new type of steel and concrete composite bridge deck comprised of an orthotropic steel plate with deep corrugation and a concrete slab was proposed in this paper. In the new composite deck, many parameters, such as concrete slab thickness, corrugated steel plate height and width, etc., will affect the section property. The reasonable detail size of composite cross section was optimized to improve the flexural capacity and decrease the structural weight. Based on the size optimization of the composite section, a full scale composite deck slab was designed and its flexural bearing capacity was tested by loading experiment. The test proves that the bending capacity of the composite bridge deck is 5.67 times that of the designing capacity according to specification, and the load behaviour of the composite bridge deck in the serviceability limit state can be calculated according to the plane cross section assumption.