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A Design Concept for an All Composite Road Bridge

Article · January 2011

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-17487-2_33

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 CICE 2010 - The 5th International Conference on FRP Composites in Civil Engineering
September 27-29, 2010 Beijing, China

A design concept for an all composite road bridge

Benedict Leo, Anup Chakrabortty & Amar Khennane (a.khennane@adfa.edu.au)
School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW@ADFA, Canberra, Australia

ABSTRACT: The present paper describes a design concept for an all composite road bridge. Most of the
components, including the deck to girder connection, are made entirely using the pultrusion process. The
stiffness of the girders is tailored to meet the deflection requirements. The analysis results have shown that the
structure can carry the specified loads with safety.

1 INTRODUCTION 2.1 Description

Despite many advantages over conventional Using the newly developed filament wound hybrid
materials, composites are making limited progress beam as detailed in the sequel (Chakrabortty et al.
in the field of highway structures, where the only 2010), a design concept for an all FRP bridge is
niche markets is in FRP deck construction over presented. A typical cross section of the girder is
steel girders and externally bonded FRP repair. In- shown on Figure 3. The girder consists of a pul-
deed, there are few all composite bridges. The rea- truded profile, a CFRP laminate, and a concrete
son is to be found in the low stiffness of the GFRP block wrapped in a filament wound GFRP lami-
girders. Using GFRP typically results in a very nate. The particularity of this design is that the
thick girder cross section as shown on Figure 1 de- CFRP laminate is not designed to fail first but
picting the Tech21 Bridge built in 1997. The alter- rather to tailor the stiffness of the girder.
native is to use hybrid girders combining GFRP,
CFRP, and concrete (Deskovic et al, 1995; Can-
ning et al, 1999; van Erp et al, 2002). However, the
design of such girders was based on that of rein-
forced concrete in the sense that the carbon lami-
nate, the stiffest material, was designed to fail first
to serve as a warning sign of collapse, thus playing
the role of steel yielding in a reinforced concrete
beam. As a result, such girders suffer from an in-
herent lack of stiffness, and when used in a bridge,
they had to be put side by side as shown on Figure
2.

Figure 3: Typical girder cross section

The Strongwell deck system was selected for this

Figure 1: Cross section of the Tech21all composite bridge
(Farhey 2005)
bridge. Researchers at Virginia Tech have evalu-
ated the performance of this multi-cellular modular
FRP deck system produced using pultruded com-
ponents (Liu et al. 2008). The mechanical proper-
ties are readily available in the design manual, and
the orthotropic properties of the square tube as-
sembly and of the equivalent deck have been cal-
culated and published by Liu et al (2008).

Figure 2: Bridge Cross-Section of FCDD Proposal (van Erp

et al 2002)

2. PROPOSED DESIGN
Figure 4: Strongwell deck system
 With steel girders, the FRP deck is usually at-
tached using shear studs. However, this type of
mechanical deck-to-girder connections shows sev-
eral disadvantages. The concentrated load intro-
duction points can lead to high local stress concen-
trations and the necessity of cutting holes in the
decks can affect the durability (Keller,2009).
Figure 5: Deck-girder connection
In the present case, it is even more difficult to
attach the studs to the hybrid girder. Therefore, a
new deck-to-girder attachment made entirely of
adhesive bonding is proposed. The system shown
on Figure 5 consists of a pultruded key that takes
the shape of the girder. It provides enough bonding
area between the deck and the girders to ensure
stability of the deck girder system
2.2 Design
2.2.1 Design loads
In addition to self weight, the Australian bridge
design code AS 5100 recommends the use of the
M1600 moving traffic loading and S1600 station-
ary traffic loading shown on Figures 6 and 7.
Figure 6. M1600 moving traffic load (AS 5100.2, 2004)
Figure 7. S1600 stationary traffic load (AS 5100.2, 2004)
Table 1, gives the various load factors for the load
combinations under ULS and SLS.
Type of load factor Symbol ULS SLS
Dead load (DL) γD 1.2 1.0
Superimposed dead γSD 2.0 1.0
load (SDL)
Traffic load γT 1.8 1.0
Table 1. Load factors for ULS and SLS
2.2.2 Determination of the number of girders
A unit length of the deck in the transversal di-
rection is chosen as the model to determine the
girders’ spacing. The strip of the bridge deck is
idealised as a continuous beam with the girders
considered as simple supports as shown in Figure
8. A total of nine girders are first assumed and the
spacing between each girder is 875 mm. Four axle
loads, P, are applied at appropriate distances ac-
cording to the design traffic models shown in Fig-
ures 6 and 7. The UDL, w is also applied across
the whole beam. The largest deflections of the
bridge deck, ∆T obtained from the two traffic load
conditions, M 1600 and S 1600 are 0.97 mm and
0.66 mm respectively. When compared to the al-
lowable deflection, 11.7 mm, these values are very
small. This indicates that there is a possibility of
further reducing the number of girders. However,
it must be noted that the lesser the number of gird-
ers, the larger the load on each girder will be. This
means that the girder has to be designed with a
deeper section and reinforced with a thicker CFRP
laminate and/or concrete section to achieve suffi-
cient flexural stiffness. With the above considera-
tion, and after further trials, the total of nine gird-
ers was selected for this proposed bridge structure
with a girder to girder spacing of 875 mm.
Figure 8. Model for the determination of girders’ spacing
2.2.3 Design of the Hybrid Beam
2.2.3.1 Sizing of the beam
The hybrid beam consists of a high strength
concrete (HSC) block with thickness C and width
b, a GFRP pultruded box sectional profile of
height h with uniform thickness tw, a CFRP lami-
nate of thickness t, and an outer filament wind
GFRP wrap of thickness tg with fibres orientated at
±45°/90o. The cross section of this hybrid beam
is shown in Figure 3. The overall height of the hy-
brid beam is H and width b2. As a starting point,
certain initial dimensions of the hybrid beam are
chosen based on recommendations for a reinforced
concrete beam while other dimensions are chosen
via trial and error so as to allow for the design
process to continue. In reinforced concrete design,
the span to depth ratio varies between 10 and 20.
The lower limit of 10 is chosen so that a deeper
beam can be achieved and the problem of a lack of
stiffness of a thin walled GFRP box section can be
addressed. Thus, for a span of 8 m, the depth of the
hybrid beam, H is chosen as 800 mm. The concrete
block should not be too thin otherwise it might fail
prematurely through punching failure. But, it
should not be too thick either, otherwise the self
weight of the beam will increase greatly since con-
crete is the heaviest constituent in this beam. The
ratio of the depth of the GFRP pultruded profile to
the thickness of the concrete layer is chosen to be
4, i.e. c  h 4 . Since c  h  H , the concrete
depth is calculated as c  160 mm and that of the
pultruded profile as h  640 mm with a width,
b  300 mm . The thickness of the GFRP pultruded
profile is set to t w  10 mm since this is limited
by the pultrusion process. The only unknown is the
thickness of the CFRP laminate.
2.2.3.2 CFRP thickness
To determine the CFRP thickness, which controls
the stiffness of the girder, the total deflection is
written as function of the laminate thickness, t, and
compared to the deflection criterion recommended
by AS5100, which states that the deflection limit
of a road bridge under traffic for SLS under live
loading shall not be greater than L 600 .
δ total (t )  δ bend (t )  δ shear (t )  L 600
where δ bend is the deflection due to bending in a
four point loading case and δ shear is the deflection
due to transverse shear effects.
Solving equation (1) under the worst SLS load
scenario using Maple yielded a CFRP thickness of
11.92 ~ 12mm
2.2.3.3 Failure analysis
The beam can fail in a number of ways; crushing
of the concrete, buckling of the webs, or local
bearing failure at the support. The later is quite
premature, and can be averted using adequate local
support. The ideal scenario is for the beam to fail
through concrete crushing.
- Lateral stability
In general, pultruded box sections have high resis-
tance to lateral torsional buckling. However, limits
are often imposed on the section’s height to width
ratio to prevent lateral instability and also to satisfy
other design requirements (Deskovic, 1995). The
beam’s height to width ratio is often checked by
the following equation, (C  h)  k , where k is a
constant to be chosen by the designer. Deskovic et
al. (1995) has recommended a value of k = 3 for
composite sections and thin walled hybrid sec-
tions. Using the trailed initial width, b = 300 mm,
gives a value of k = 2.67 which is well within the
accepted value.
- Web buckling load
Another possible failure of the beam is through
buckling of the webs of the pultruded box section.
To ensure that the webs of the hybrid beam are
stiff enough to take the load and not buckle, the
theoretical web shear buckling stress is calculated
using the method given in (Holmes and Just, 1983,
Deskovic et al. 1995). The web buckling load was
estimated to 3545 kN which is far greater than the
applied load under ULS which is equal to 719 kN.
- Strength capacity
The ideal scenario is for the beam to fail
through concrete crushing. Using strain compati-
bility, as shown on Figure 9, the moment capacity
of the beam and the load at which the concrete
should crush are calculated and compared to the
external applied loads under ULS.
(1)
Figure 9: Strain compatibility
The calculated moment of 2270 kN.m is far
greater than the applied moment of 959 kN.m un-
der ULS.
3. FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS
Once all the components of the bridge are de-
signed, the finite element software ANSYS was
used as a design check. The whole of the bridge
superstructure is modelled as shown on Figure 10.
The bridge deck is modelled as a slab using the
SHELL 91 element, which is a layered structural
shell element that can be used for modelling thick
sandwich structures. It is defined by eight nodes,
layer thicknesses, layer material direction angles
and orthotropic properties, and has six degrees of
freedom at each node. The top and bottom plates
of the girder have a thickness of 9.5 mm each
while the square tube assembly has a thickness of
152.4 mm.
The hybrid girders are modelled using BEAM
189 element with a meshed cross section. This al-
lows the user to create any cross sectional profile
and assign different material models to represent
the different constituents of a composite beam.
Another important feature of the element is that it
can be offset from any chosen location. The ele-
ment is based on the Timoshenko beam theory,
and has six degrees of freedom at each node.
Figure 10: Finite element model of the bridge
Figure 11 shows the deflected shape of the
bridge under the worst SLS load combination. The
maximum deflection recorded is equal to 13.085
mm, which is less than L/600 as specified in the
code.
Figure 11: Deflected shape of the bridge superstructure
Figure 12 shows a contour plot of the von-Mises
stress in the deck. It can be seen that the stresses
are very low. This confirms once more that the de-
sign of composite structures is deflection driven.
Figure 12: Plot of the von Mises stress in the deck
4. CONCLUSION
The present study has shown that it is possible to
design an all-composite bridge that meets the de-
flection requirements without the encumbrance of
very thick girder cross sections. The stiffness of
the girders is tailored to meet the deflection re-
quirements. Most of the components, including the
deck to girder connection, are made entirely using
the pultrusion process. The analysis results have
shown that the structure can carry the specified
loads with safety. Future work will emphasise on
the economics of the bridge, and its dynamical be-
haviour.
5. REFERENCES
AS 5100, Australian Standards, Bridge Design Code, 2004.
Canning, L., Hollaway, L. and Thorne A.M. 1999, Manufac-
ture, testing and numerical analysis of an innovative
polymer composite/concrete structural unit. Proceedings
– Institution of Civil Engineers, Structures and Buildings,
134, pp. 231-241.
Chakrabortty, A. Khennane A. Morozov E. An experimental
investigation into the behavior of filament wound FRP-
HSC hybrid beams. CICE2010, Beijing, China
Deskovic, N., Triantafillou, T.C. & Meier, U. 1995. Innova-
tive design of FRP combined with concrete: short term
behavior. ASCE Jou. Struct. Engrg 121(7). 1069-1078.
Farhey N. 2005. Long-Term Performance Monitoring of the
Tech 21 All-Composite Bridge. ASCE Jou. Comp. for
Construction, 9( 3) 255-262
Holmes, M. & Just, D.J. 1983. GRP in Structural Engineer-
ing, Applied Science Publishers, UK.
Keller T. (Accessed November 2009). Fiber-Reinforced
Polymer Bridge Decks–Status Report and Future Pros-
pects.
http://www.cobrae.org/afbeeldingen/paperkeller.pdf ,
Liu, Z., Cousins, T.E., Lesko, J.J. & Sotelino, E.D. 2008.
Design recommendations for a FRP bridge deck sup-
ported on steel superstructure. ASCE Jour. Comp. Con-
struction, 12(6) 660-668.
van Erp, GM, Heldt, TJ, Cattell, CL, & Marsh, R, 2002 ‘A
new approach to fibre composite bridge structures’, Pro-
ceedings of the 17th Australasian conference on the me-
chanics of structures and materials, ACMSM17, Australia
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