Presentation on Shear Assessment of Solid Slab Bridges

At the IABSE spring conference in Rotterdam, I’ve presented a paper on the shear assessment of solid slab bridges.

The abstract is as follows:

The capacity of reinforced concrete solid slab bridges in shear is assessed by comparing the design beam shear resistance to the design value of the applied shear force due to the permanent actions and live loads. Results from experiments on half-scale continuous slab bridges are used to develop a set of recommendations for the assessment of slab bridges in shear. A method is proposed allowing to take the transverse force redistribution in slabs under concentrated loads into account, as well as a horizontal load spreading method for the concentrated loads. For selected cases of existing straight solid slab bridges, a comparison is made between the results based on the shear capacity according to the Dutch Code NEN 6720 and from the combination of the Eurocode (EN 1992-1-1:2005) with the recommendations, showing an improved agreement.

You can view the slides here: