Construction and testing of an innovative concrete bridge deck totally reinforced with glass FRP bars: Val-alain bridge on highway 20 east

The Val-Alain Bridge, located in the Municipality of Val-Alain on Highway 20 East, crosses over Henri River in Qúbec, Canada. The bridge is a slab-on-girder type with a skew angle of 20° over a single span of 49.89 m and a total width of 12.57 m. The bridge has four simply supported steel girders spaced at 3,145 mm. The deck slab is a 225-mm -thick concrete slab, with semi-integral abutments, continuous over the steel girders with an overhang of 1,570 mm on each side. The concrete deck slab and the bridge barriers were reinforced with glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforcing bars utilizing high-performance concrete. The Val-Alain Bridge is the Canada's first concrete bridge deck totally reinforced with GFRP reinforcing bars. Using such nonmetallic reinforcement in combination with high-performance concrete leads to an expected service life of more than 75 years. The bridge is well instrumented with electrical resistance strain gauges and fiber-optic sensors at critical locations to record internal strain data. Also, the bridge was tested for service performance using calibrated truckloads. Design concepts, construction details, and results of the first series of live load field tests are presented.