Experimental study on flexural performance of steel-UHTCC composite bridge decks considering different shear connection degrees

Abstract

Traditional steel–concrete composite bridge deck (CBD) is prone to crack in the concrete layer, which reduces its flexural capacity and durability. Due to the excellent crack resistance behavior and characteristic of tensile strain hardening, ultra-high toughness cementitious composite (UHTCC) has become a promising material to solve this problem. In this study, the flexural performance of bridge decks composed of steel and UHTCC using shear studs is analyzed by means of experimental research and finite element (FE) analysis. Five steel-UHTCC CBDs with different shear connection degrees and rib dimensions were fabricated and tested. Then, FE models of steel-UHTCC CBDs were established by ABAQUS, involving FE examples for comparing with the tests and 10 groups of models to conduct a parametric study. The flexural resistant performance of steel-UHTCC CBDs was studied concerning the key design parameters, including stud number, span length, rib dimension, thickness of UHTCC and longitudinal reinforcement ratio. The effect of shear connection degree on the flexural resistance of CBDs was discussed in detail. Finally, a modified theoretical formula was proposed for predicting the flexural resistance of steel-UHTCC CBDs.