DEVELOPMENT AND CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF A PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE USING FIBER REINFORCED COMPOSITES

摘要

Different configurations are examined for the design of a 33 meters long Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRP) pedestrian bridge spanning over a two lanes traffic road. The main concept under development is a sandwich construction consisting of FRP panels and a structural core. This concept is used for the design of both the bridge deck and the columns. The guidelines of the project are to exploit the particular properties of the FRP to obtain a lightweight structure with attractive aesthetics, meeting all performance and environmental criteria yet being economically competitive. The bridge or at least its central span must also be mobile or removable in order to allow occasional transportation of very tall objects on the underlying traffic road. For this purpose a preliminary study is conducted in order to determine the appropriate structural shape, material architecture, modular components fabrication and ease of installation. While many FRP bridge projects up to date use pultruded FRP components, one of the main points in this project is to introduce Vacuum Bag Molding and possibly Filament Winding as efficient and reliable methods for manufacturing of FRP bridge components. The selected deck and column concepts from this preliminary design are found to be suitable for a refined analysis and the manufacturing of component prototypes.