<p>Bridge edge beams may take up to 60% of the life-cycle measure costs of a bridge and cause con- siderable user costs because of roadworks. The Swedish Transport Administration presented new edge beam solutions that could become better for the society in terms of cost. Stainless steel has been considered for enhanced durability, preventing expensive maintenance. The purpose of this paper is to motivate the use of stainless steel in the solutions proposed. A life-cycle cost analysis is carried out to evaluate the cost-efficiency of a concrete integrated edge beam with stainless and carbon steel reinforcement in a bridge project. The influence of the discount rate is addressed by a sensitivity analysis. Stainless steel is shown to lead to cost-efficient edge beam solutions. Low dis- count rates encourage using better quality designs with higher investment costs but lower life- cycle measure costs and user costs, which supports the use of stainless steel.</p>
The effective width is a relevant parameter for the design of bridge overhang slabs under concentrated loads. Experimental tests have been used to assess expressions for its calculation. However, the load capacity increases with the width until a transition area is reached. Test specimens may have lacked enough width to reach full shear capacity, affecting thus the evaluation of the results. On the other hand, within the transition area, a threshold value has been hypothesized to match the effective width. This paper aims to provide recommendations for minimal widths that guarantee the full capacity of overhang slabs and to assess the calculation of the effective width by means of the threshold value and other formulations. The effect of the edge beam is also considered. A campaign of validated non-linear FE-simulations based on experiments on range of width-span ratios was performed. The results suggest using a width-span ratio of at least 4.0 for slabs without an edge beam and 5.3 for slabs with an edge beam for the experimental practice. The efficiency of the formulation for the effective widths is diffuse and the use of threshold value leads to unsafe predictions. Instead, linear-elastic FE-analyses are recommended for the design practice.
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