ABSTRACT
Increasing the stiffness and reducing the internal stresses are effective measures against fatigue in a steel plate deck. One possible method for achieving these aims is to make a composite bridge deck by overlaying a thin layer of ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) on top of the deck. When an UHPFRC is used as an overlay material for a steel bridge deck, its fiber-bridging can resist crack widening even after cracks occur. Therefore, both crack-widening control and reinforcing effect can be expected. We performed a wheel-load-running test on a full-scale UHPFRC-steel composite bridge deck. The UHPFRC was found to greatly mitigate the tension that was generated by traffic load and thus to reduce fatigue damage so as to increase the durability of the reinforced deck, and the composite deck was proven able to withstand a traffic load equivalent to that for the 200-year design traffic volume.
