Capacity of lightly reinforced bridge deck cantilever overhang subjected to static loading

Abstract

Concrete bridge deck cantilever overhang supported by reinforced concrete T -beam is expected to have an enhanced carrying capacity resulting from the stiffness of T -beam elements. In this paper, full scale static load test on bridge deck cantilever overhang sample and its numerical modelling is presented. The deck slab was supported by two wide concrete T -beams and subjected to static simulated vehicular wheel load applied at the free end of the deck cantilever. The performance of the deck slab is considered to be enhanced by the supporting wide flange T -beams. The slab was therefore reinforced with only anti-cracks steel reinforcement mainly for thermal and shrinkage cracking. The ultimate load, deflection and strain results from both laboratory test and finite element model showed a satisfactory ultimate strength capacity of the system, in which an ultimate load far beyond codes specified vehicular wheel load was obtained, thus highlighting the contribution of the T -beam stiffness in the bearing capacity of the lightly reinforced cantilevered slab.