Open Access

ARTICLE

Experimental and Numerical Investigations on Multicellular GFRP Bridge Deck Panels

M. P. Muthuraj^1,2, K. Nithyapriya¹

1 Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India-641 014
2 Corresponding author. E-mail: m_p_muthuraj@rediffmail.com

Computers, Materials & Continua 2015, 48(2), 119-132. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2015.048.119

Abstract

The maintenance, upgrading and replacement of existing bridges have become urgent requirement and a challenging task for the construction sector. Bridge decks made of fibre reinforced polymers (FRP), have been widely adopted both in new construction and replacement of existing bridge decks. This paper reports the studies carried out hand lay-up multicellular glass fibre reinforced polymer. Multicellular bridge deck panels with various cross sectional profiles have been analysed using a general purpose finite element software ANSYS. A cross sectional profile that satisfied the deflection criteria with minimum weight was selected for analysis and fabrication. Six multicellular GFRP composite bridge deck panel of size 1250mm × 333mm × 150mm (l×b×d) were fabricated by hand lay-up process using various materials. The responses have been compared with analytical and numerical solutions and found to be they are in good agreement with each other.

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Keywords

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