We’re looking forward to attending the Austroads Bridge Conference being held at the Pullman Melbourne next week from 3 – 6 April 2017.
Hosted by VicRoads Australia, this will mark the 25th anniversary of the first ABC conference and is anticipated to be a pivotal event for attendees with a specialty in bridge engineering as they look to share experiences such as key note speaker Dr. Michel Virolgeux’s structural engineer design for the Millau Viaduct, innovation, achievements and knowledge – all focused on this year’s theme, connecting communities.
For HERA, this forum will also be an opportune time for us to showcase our design standards and guidance we’ve been driving the past few years.
Our Structural Systems General Manager Dr. Stephen Hicks is set to present his insights into the development of new guidance for existing steel-concrete composite bridges and publication of AS/NZS 5100.6 – the first joint New Zealand and Australian steel and composite bridge design standard.
Dr. Stephen Hicks said “Since the 1920’s steel-concrete composite bridges have been widely used in New Zealand, however many of the shear connector types used aren’t supported in the current NZTA’s Bridge Manuals design rules.”
Dr. Stephen Hicks said “Since the 1920’s steel-concrete composite bridges have been widely used in New Zealand, however many of the shear connector types used aren’t supported in the current NZTA’s Bridge Manuals design rules.”
“To remedy this, we’ve worked with our member company Opus to carry out a two year research project to develop a design guide capable of assessing the load resistance of the around 270 existing composite road bridges on New Zealand’s state highway network – involving the review of 124 as-built records of composite bridges and evaluation of historical material strengths to facilitate bridge assessment.”
“Our work has since led to the development of a new design equation for the most common shear connector types, and a set of different design procedures to allow bending resistance to be assessed – improving load capacities for existing bridges and significantly increasing the efficiency of highway networks by opening it up to heavier 50MAX and high productivity vehicles,” he said.
Published as NZ Transport Agency research report 602 and entitled Evaluation of shear connectors in composite bridge, this work has since been made freely available online here.
For more information, please contact General Manager Structural Systems Dr. Stephen Hicks, or co-author and Senior Structural Engineer Jing Cao.
