Special Considerations and Analysis for the Bascule Bridge Pavement

Abstract

The bascule bridge is one of the most appropriate bridges for ports and inland rivers from structural and economic viewpoints. However, the difficulty in successfully paving steel deck pavement remains to be solved for its wide applications. Serious premature failures of the pavements are found on many bascule bridges. So far, there is little discussion about this issue. In this study, the dynamic response of bascule bridge deck pavement was analyzed based on the different rotation velocities and different pavement elastic modulus for the Haihe Bridge being built in Tianjin, China, one of the largest bascule type bridges in the world. The results indicate that the shear stress of the pavement will increase greatly when the main girder opens wide, and simultaneously the girder rotation angle and rotation speed will lead to the non-uniform distribution of the shear stress. Since it is hard to control the pavement modulus due to the changing environmental temperature in the real world, an appropriate rotation velocity is suggested for reducing the shear stress between the pavement and the steel deck.