Analysis of Isotropic and Orthotropic Sandwich Bridge Decks

This paper presents the behaviour of isotropic and orthotropic sandwich bridge decks under IRC class-A wheel loading. In general, the fatigue damage of the bridge deck under the wheel load system is caused by stress concentration. Therefore, the stress concentration and displacement of simply supported steel and steel-polyurethane sandwich decks are determined using FEM. The models of both the decks are developed using ANSYS Workbench 14.0 and are analysed under area loading. The geometrical and material properties are taken from the reported results. The present results are compared with the reported literature and are found to be in good agreement. The optimum mesh size is chosen through a convergence study for discretizing the decks. It is found that the stresses in the steel deck are reduced from 40 to 85% and the maximum stress is reduced from 75 to 80% by using a sandwich deck system. The displacement of the sandwich deck system is found to be 85–90% less than that in the single-layer steel deck. Here, the thickness of the steel deck is equal to the sum of the two steel faceplates of the sandwich deck. The study shows that fatigue damage can be reduced in the steel bridge deck by using the sandwich deck system. The developed sandwich deck system shows good performance and proves to be an effective solution for the existing steel decks.