Ultra high strength fiber reinforced concrete (UFC) is a new concrete material that possesses excellent characteristics such as ultra high strength, high toughness, high durability, and high flowability. It also requires no reinforcing bars. A study for highway bridges utilizing the structural advantages of UFC has been conducted and this material was applied to an actual road bridge for the first time in Japan. By adopting PC composite structure of UFC girders and the conventional concrete deck slab, the improvements described below were realized compared to the original design usingconventional concrete: the traffic control at the crossroad during the transportation of the girders and the erection work was cut down from 2 daysto about 2 hours; the capacity of the crane for the erection of the girders was reduced from 120 t to 50 t because the weight of each girder was reduced from 12 t to 5 t; the number of trailers for transporting the main girders was reduced from 6 to 1; the lifecycle costs can be reduced becauseof the extremely high durability of UFC; the dead load of superstructure was reduced more than 30% and aseismicity of the substructure was enhanced. Various advantages such as the realization of low girder height, long span and significant light weight in bridges can be expected in the development of UFC henceforth. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Abstract