Scientists study bridge expansion effects

Kansas State University researchers said they’ve determined integral bridges are an economical alternative to other, more expensive, bridge designs.

Associate Professor Dunja Peric led the study that focused on different soil conditions and temperature changes on thermally induced integral bridge expansions.

He said unlike conventional bridges, integral bridges lack expansion joints and have a continuous deck that creates an interconnected piece, Integral bridges are more economically efficient than conventional bridges, according to Peric, but their design remains experiential and involves intuition, experimentation and observations.

Although the advantages of integral bridges outweigh their disadvantages, there is a need for the knowledge discovery, which will further reduce the disadvantages, Peric said. The study is a steppingstone. It provides insight into the mechanisms of the bridge response. Now, based on this study “¦ we can extend the existing computational model to include other loads, such as traffic and seismic loads.

The research has been presented in Greece during the International Symposium on Numerical Models in Geomechanics, as well as in St. Louis at the Artificial Neural Networks in Engineering Conference.