Composite Advantage, a manufacturer of very large fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite parts, has installed a prefabricated, lightweight bridge to replace an old vehicle bridge in the city of Trail, British Columbia.
The bridge features FRP panels specified in four different shapes ranging from wide to narrow including a trapezoid shape for transition and cut-outs to accommodate steel mast and prefabricated with LED lighting and features that included crowns, curbs, flexible shapes and rail connections. Insets were also molded into the undersides of the FRP panels to clear splices and bolts in the steel girders. The deck width for the bridge’s tower section was 7 m, while the structure’s span section was 4 m wide. The tower deck panels had a variable thickness from 79 mm to 145 mm with a 2% crown in the center of the deck panels. The span sections were prefabricated with a variable thickness ranging from 109mm to 145mm with a 2% crown in the center of the deck panel.
‘There were a couple of challenges that made FRP composites the right choice for this application,’ said Composite Advantage President Scott Reeve. ‘The pedestrian bridge deck had to be built in conjunction with the sewer pipe bridge. But that meant there was little to no access underneath the structure for installing the bridge deck panels. Rugged conditions at the river gorge also meant we needed to simplify construction at the work site.’
This story is reprinted from material from Composite Advantage, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
