The
characteristics of bridges with FRP decks (such as mass, stiffness, and
damping) are significantly different
from that of the traditional
concrete and
steel bridges, which may result in a much different performance of FRP bridges
from these traditional bridges. For this reason, detailed finite element
analyses are used in the present study to investigate the load distribution and
the dynamic
response of FRP deck bridges. The study is focused on a steel
multi-girder bridge and a concrete multi-girder bridge that are modeled using
the finite element method to predict the modal characteristics. The present
study analyzes the bridge-vehicle interaction based on a three dimensional
vehicle-bridge coupled model. The dynamic response of bridges is obtained in
the time domain by using an iterative procedure employed at each time step,
considering the road roughness of the deck as a vertical excitation to the
vehicles. The load distribution and the dynamic response of bridges are
compared between the FRP deck and concrete deck bridges. In addition, there are
some arguments whether a composite action between the deck and girders should
be pursued or if a simple non-composite design should be used. Discussions on
this aspect have been made by modeling both the composite and non-composite
systems.