Five Steel-Free Bridge Deck Slabs in Canada

Abstract

The Connestogo River bridge, constructed in Ontario, Canada, in 1975, is believed to be the first bridge in the world in which a concrete deck slab on longitudinal girders was designed by taking into account the beneficial arching action in the slab. Since the construction of the Connestogo River bridge, local code has incorporated an empirical design method for deck slabs that takes into account their inherent arching action. Researchers have successfully enhanced the strength of deck slabs by further exploiting their arching action. With the help of tests on both large- and small-scale laboratory models, they have concluded that, provided the slab is suitably confined in both the longitudinal and transverse directions, a deck slab supported by parallel longitudinal beam does not require any reinforcement. Deck slabs without tensile reinforcement have come to be known as “steel-free.”