Impact of overweight vehicles (with heavy axle loads) on bridge deck deterioration.

Details

• Creators:
  Lin, Zhibin ; Zhao, Jian ; Tabatabai, Habib
• Corporate Creators:
  National Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education (U.S.) ; United States. Dept. of Transportation. Research and Innovative Technology Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Axle loads
  • Bridge decks
  • Overweight loads
• Publication/ Report Number:
  CFIRE 04-06
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Wisconsin
• Corporate Publisher:
  National Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education (U.S.)
• Abstract:
  Bridge deck slabs develop compressive stresses from global flexural deformation and locally from high-level ; wheel loads when it is subjected to overweight trucks. This study quantified the impact of overweight vehicles ; with heavy axle loads on bridge decks using laboratory tests and numerical simulations. ; The laboratory tests focused on evaluating the impact of combined mechanical stresses and freeze-thaw cycles on ; the durability of air-entrained concrete. Concrete cylinders, after being cured in saturated limewater for 28 days, ; were subjected to various levels of compressive loads and then exposed to 300 freeze-thaw (F/T) cycles. Rapid ; chloride ion penetrability tests were conducted to evaluate the chloride permeability of the concrete samples. The ; laboratory test results indicated that the mechanical loading combined with freeze-thaw cycles significantly ; increased the permeability of air-entrained concrete and may accelerate the deterioration of concrete elements ; such as bridge decks. The observed permeability increase was due to the fact that higher compressive loads ; caused more extensive microcracks in concrete, and the damaged concrete further degrades under freeze-thaw ; cycles, which may have further opened and interconnected the microcracks. ; Bridge deck analyses were conducted to investigate stress distributions and stress levels in typical concrete ; bridge decks subjected to high axle loads. The numerical analyses using the idealized bridge models indicated ; that the normal stress in bridge decks in the transverse direction can be significantly affected by the thickness of ; bridge deck, the girder spacing, and the magnitude of the wheel loads. The analyses results also indicated that ; the normal stresses in the longitudinal direction may be calculated as the summation of the stresses due to global ; bending of the bridge superstructure under the truck loads, which can estimated using typical design/rating ; procedures and the stress elevations near the wheel loads. The proposed equations may be used, in addition to the ; typical design/rating calculations, to capture the adverse stresses in bridge decks subjected to overweight trucks.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  248K091
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/25356/dot_25356_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 17.05 MB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:4e1105f10ed7c9414afff6dbc2893388f63195b36bd3efc4f4af91a440ded5fc395708683bd743597c72cca70b997b08c9e4cc1315323551b05cc9fa5314b477