Concrete arches and reinforced soil: a sustainable alternative structure for road bridges
Concrete arches and reinforced soil: a sustainable alternative structure for road bridges
Road bridges are necessary infrastructures for transportation. As such, they are subject to thorough scrutiny for their environmental, social, and economic impacts. An adequate substantiality assessment applied to bridge design must minimize the negative impacts of the structure on the surrounding environment. A concrete deck and piles, together with cantilever abutments, is a well-established and conventional bridge design option. An alternative solution is precast concrete arches, widely used in bridge and tunnel constructions, providing stable, long-lasting support even under heavy load conditions. Concrete arches can be constructed together with reinforced soil walls (RSW) solutions, for both embankment and abutment zones, which are considered cost-effective solutions with short construction periods, making them an attractive option for such structural and geotechnical engineering projects. The compound concrete arch and RSW structure results in a resilient, efficient, and cost-effective design. This study presents a simple approach for an environmental and economic assessment of two bridge designs: a classical solution with cantilever abutments and a concrete deck slab, and concrete arches with RSW on top. Based on the environmental impact, and associated costs, the precast arch bridges with RSW solution are judged to be the better alternative.
K. Malekmohammadi; Aníbal Moncada; Ivan Puig Damians
18th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE2024)
A - New developments on structural design
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