Composite Steel Tee Concrete Deck Bridge System: Design, Fabrication, and Full-Scale Verification

Abstract

A short-span highway bridge system composed of steel tee sections embedded in a concrete deck slab during fabrication of the member was developed for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The connection between the concrete deck slab and steel tee sections consists of transverse reinforcing bars passing through drilled holes located near the top of the steel tee stems and cast into the deck slab. This paper presents the design and fabrication approach for the composite steel tee concrete deck bridge system. A full-scale prototype is fabricated in accordance with the design and fabrication approach, and the approach is verified through monitoring and destructive testing of the prototype. The prototype is load tested to examine its performance relative to AASHTO service and strength requirements. The full-scale prototype results indicate that the design and fabrication approach produces a composite steel tee concrete deck bridge system that satisfies AASHTO limit state criteria.