Long-term performance of lightweight advanced composite road bridges

These materials have revolutionised the aerospace industry by enabling lighter, more fuel-efficient passenger aircraft such as the A380.

These materials also show strong potential to revolutionise our surface transport infrastructure by enabling prefabrication of lightweight, durable road bridges which can be quickly craned into position on site, thus minimising traffic flow disruption during construction.

Our research at CEGE is focused on assessing the long-term performance of these composite road bridges under combined environmental and mechanical actions (millions of lorry load cycles which become more onerous over time). In a three-pronged approach the research draws together continuous monitoring of bridges on the road network using state-of-the-art sensors, with computer modelling of the bridges and fatigue testing of full-scale bridges in the lab.

This work is supported by the EPSRC and also by industrial partners including Highways England and Network Rail. It is pursued in collaboration with academic partners both in the UK and abroad, such as EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland. Advanced composite bridge technology is still young and so this research will underpin a new generation of such bridges, while also producing reliable, user-friendly guidance for the design of these novel bridges by practising engineers.