Design of Reinforced Concrete Slab Bridge for The Use in Plantation Area

Abstract

In Malaysia, plantation sector such as oil palm play a significant part of the country's economy. To ensure the continuous grow and success of this sector, bridges which serve as a means of crossing over obstruction such as water channels, river, and ditches and join the road network as an important and efficient road infrastructure for plantation area. This paper presents the analysis and design of single span reinforced concrete slab bridges for the use in plantation area.  The slab bridges with an effective span ranging from 4 m to 8 m have been analysed and designed based on Eurocode 2 which subjected to a traffic load between 10 tons and 40 tons. The traffic load was converted to equivalent vehicle load intensity applied on the deck slab. The standard design table and detailing produced from the design enable the engineer to refer to when similar site and design condition is encountered in future. The reflection on the outcome of analysis and design of the slab bridge indicate that the slab bridge design is mainly governed by traffic load effect on its bending behaviours and increase of slab thickness is unavoidable as increase the reinforcement ratio alone is not able to achieve the design requirement.  

Key words:  Reinforced concrete, slab bridge, traffic load, intensity and bending behaviours.