Abstract
Deformation of the main girder is absorbed by a continuously reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP) with microcracks in fully jointless bridges. The conventional fully jointless bridge has been challenged by durability and reliability issues because the CRCP is vulnerable to crack and hard to control the crack width when it suffers temperature variation. In this paper, a new type of fully jointless bridge with the road-bridge link slabs using strain-hardening cementitious composite (SHCC) material is investigated. First, an experiment was carried out to study the material properties of SHCC material for a preliminary assessment of road-bridge link slab performance using this material. Results found that SHCC is adequate for link slabs for its high tensile ductility and fine cracks development. Second, an SHCC slab model tensile test was carried out to study the absorptive capacity and the crack distribution of the SHCC slab. Results verified the high absorptive deformation capacity of the SHCC slabs. When the longitudinal deformation reaches 10 mm, the surface cracks in the SHCC slab are fine and dense, the crack width is kept in 80 μm, and the internal force is small. Third, by comparing the tensile test results with a conventional CRCP slab with same length, it is found that an SHCC slab has higher absorption capacity, better crack distribution, and smaller internal force than a CRCP slab. Finally, through ABAQUS finite element modelling, the stress performance of SHCC road-bridge link slabs is simulated using a trilinear constitutive model. The calculated results are consistent with the experimental results.
Highlights
Expansion joints are one of the main causes of high maintenance costs in bridges
Extensive studies have been conducted by Jin et al [6] and Zhan et al [7, 8] about their performance, and the results suggested that temperature is the main factor affecting the mechanical performance of the fully jointless bridge, especially suffering seasonal temperature decreases. e bridge deck and roadbridge link slab are rigidly connected in the fully jointless bridge
E 5.5 m-long strain-hardening cementitious composite (SHCC) slab is used to absorb 10 mm of longitudinal deformation, millions of dense cracks are found on the surface of the SHCC slab, and the crack width is within 80 μm; the minimum numbers of cracks can be calculated using formulae (4) and (5)
Summary
Expansion joints are one of the main causes of high maintenance costs in bridges. At present, there are two ways to solve the problem caused by bridge expansion joints [1]: one is to improve the expansion device and the second is to build jointless bridges. e bridge engineer Henry Derthick made it clear: “ e only good joint is no joint,” that is, to cancel the bridge expansion joint. For road-bridge link slab application, certain material properties must be satisfied: high strength for structural integrity; high tensile ductility to ensure serviceability and reliability under service traffic loads and temperature loads; and especially high absorption capacity for longitudinal deformation caused by temperature variety, shrinkage, and creep of concrete of the main girder. The high strain capacity of SHCC is used for absorption of the longitudinal deformation due to temperature change as designed Two years after this SHCC link slab was placed, the performance of this link slab remains unchanged. E purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the tensile performance of road-bridge link slabs designed with SHCC material for a macroscopically crack-free jointless bridge. Main girder CRCP, 0.8 mm Figure 2: Photos of cracks in CRCP during service of fully jointless bridge: (a) Lihecun fully jointless bridge (in Feb 2019) and (b) Xinrong No. fully jointless bridge (in Feb 2019)
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