Deck slabs of skew girder bridges

Abstract

Canadian codes allow the design of concrete deck slabs of slab-on-girder bridges by taking account of the internal arching action that develops in these slabs under concentrated wheel loads in particular. Provided that certain prescribed conditions are met, a deck slab is deemed to have met the design criteria if it is provided with a top and a bottom layer of steel reinforcement with each layer consisting of an orthogonal mesh of steel bars in which the area of cross section of the bars in each direction is at least 0.3% of the effective area of cross section of the deck slab. For deck slabs of bridges having skew angles greater than 20°, the codes require the minimum amount of reinforcement to be doubled in the end zones near the skew supports. Model testing has shown that need for such an increase can be eliminated by providing composite end diaphragms with high flexural rigidity in the horizontal plane. The proposed concept is tested on a model of fibre-reinforced concrete deck without steel reinforcement in which deficiencies in the confinement of the deck slab readily manifest themselves in form of a bending, rather than punching shear, failure. Key words: highway bridges, bridge decks, deck slabs, skew deck, skew bridges, fibre-reinforced concrete decks.