Critical factors influencing the dynamic characteristics of fibre-reinforced plastic bridges — a parametric study

Conventional bridge materials have certain environmental factors limiting their service life. These factors include termite or fungi attack on timber, chemical attacks on concrete and corrosion for steel. These facts point to the necessity of development of new construction materials and related technologies for use in bridges exposed to aggressive environmental conditions. Fibre-reinforced plastics have long been used in weight-sensitive applications such as aerospace, marine, biomedical and sports industries due to their high specific stiffness and strength. Its superior structural performance depends primarily upon its anisotropic and heterogeneous characteristics and can be optimized to the requirement of the user. However, its infrastructural application is somewhat recent. Since fibre-reinforced plastic can be moulded to various shapes, is corrosion resistant, has lower lifecycle cost and durability, it can be used in constructing bridges or its parts. However, the fibre-reinforced plastic bridge industry lacks simplified and practical design guidelines and specifications. A box girder bridge has been taken from available literature as an example and parametric studies have been carried out using general purpose finite element software ABAQUS to investigate the critical factors affecting the dynamic responses of such a fibre-reinforced plastic bridge.