Study of the Aurora Bridge with a FRP-deck instead of concrete

Exceptional and innovative Aurora Bridge originates from a bridge design competition in Helsinki. In competition the area footpath crossed a busy city junction diagonally, where the land area for bridge structures was strictly limited. The winning entry was a curved slender concrete deck pedestrian fly-over, which is suspended by sculptural “half arch”. The design is built in 2012.

In this paper it is studied if FRP could provide a real alternative solution for the relative heavy concrete deck in this specific case with its strengths and weaknesses is studied for practical application. First the original design and execution is described followed by an alternative FRP- deck solution. Both designs results are compared together with the costs. Because of the lighter deck the dynamic behaviour is checked followed by our conclusion.