Study on Bending Performance of Epoxy Adhesive Prefabricated UHPC-Steel Composite Bridge Deck

Abstract

UHPC has high strength, high toughness, and excellent durability. For orthotropic steel bridge deck pavement, UHPC can significantly increase the bridge deck’s stiffness and then solve the problems of fatigue cracking and pavement damage of the bridge deck. However, if UHPC adopts cast-in-place construction, its self-shrinkage can easily cause shrinkage cracks, and it requires high maintenance conditions. Meanwhile, the traditional stud connection will bring a great deal of welding work and cause welding fatigue. In contrast, prefabricated UHPC pavement and orthotropic steel bridge deck can greatly reduce the amount of welding of studs on the bridge deck through epoxy bonding, thus speeding up the construction process and avoiding the risk of cracking caused by UHPC self-shrinkage. In order to consider the influence of the surface state of interface and ratio of shear span to depth on flexural behavior of epoxy adhesive prefabricated UHPC-steel composite bridge deck, positive bending moment loading test with different ratios of shear span to depth was carried out, and the failure mode, load-deflection curve, interface slip, and strain distribution of the specimens were obtained. Finally, based on the cohesive interface element, the prefabricated UHPC-steel epoxy bonding interface was successfully simulated. The test results show that each specimen’s loading stage can be divided into the elastic stage, crack initiation stage, interfacial crack propagation stage, interface failure stage, and yield stage. The specimen’s ultimate failure is that the interface failure is prior to the yield at the bottom of the steel plate. During the loading process, the bending performance shows that the ultimate load $P_{B_i}$ and growth deflection $\mathrm{\Delta }{\delta }_{B_i{C}_i}$ of CD-ERA-P-λ4.44 are higher than those of other specimens in terms of the load-deflection curve. The ultimate load of CD-ERA-P-λ3.33 is lower than that of CD-ERG-P-λ3.33, which decreases by 4.6%, but the increasing deflection increases by 75%. Simultaneously, the interface slip of the specimen is similar, which further shows that the specimen has the best bending performance when the surface of the steel plate is rough (R) and the surface of the prefabricated UHPC plate is grooved (A). No matter what kind of surface is used at the interface, the reduction of the ratio of shear span to depth will aggravate the ultimate failure of the interface and the cracking of the precast UHPC slab. Finally, the bending performance of epoxy adhesive prefabricated UHPC-steel composite bridge deck is successfully simulated based on the cohesive interface element, which is verified by the test results.