Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Larry Bank, left inspects plans for a bridge near Waupan, Wisc., with (from left) Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Mike Oliva, David Deiter, a research engineer with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Adam Berg, a graduate student in civil structural engineering in the department. (Photo: Phil McDade) (27K JPG)

For more than a decade, Wisconsin's Department of Transportation has been upgrading state Highway 151 - one of the main traffic corridors between southern Wisconsin and the industrial Fox Valley.

Among the major upgrades: building bridges at some of the highway's dangerous intersections. Now, for the first time in the department's history, one of those bridges will be built with a fiber-reinforced polymer material developed by College of Engineering faculty.

The bridge will be built in the spring of 2003 at the intersection of state highways 151 and 26, near Waupan. The intersection is one of the busiest in the traffic corridor, because Highway 26 provides a direct shortcut between Highway 151 and Oshkosh and the northern Fox Valley.

Most bridges are built with concrete and steel reinforcement. But under the direction of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Larry Bank, researchers at the College of Engineering have developed a new bridge deck system that utilizes fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP). Plans call for an FRP reinforcing grid to be placed on the top of the concrete roadway and an FRP stay-in-place panel on the bottom of the roadway. Bank has been working on the Waupan bridge project with Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Mike Oliva and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Jeff Russell.

According to Bank, using fiber-reinforced polymer to reinforce a concrete bridge deck has several advantages over traditional steel reinforcement methods. Because of Wisconsin's harsh winter climate, and the use of salt on snow-covered roads, concrete that is reinforced with metal tends to crack and corrode over time. While the supporting piers and girders of a bridge may stay in good shape, the concrete-and-steel reinforcement usually has to be replaced at some point of the bridge's lifetime. Using FRP materials to reinforce bridges should cut down or eliminate the need to replace bridge deck supports, he said.

"It's not going to corrode and rust," he said. "It will lead to less maintenance and longer life of the structures."

In addition, Bank hopes the use of FRP reinforcing materials will reduce the time and cost it takes to build a bridge. The FRP deck materials developed at UW-Madison can be brought to the work site pre-assembled, which will lessen the time it takes to construct a bridge. That will make drivers happier, as it should reduce the time that the bridge is closed to vehicle traffic. The FPR reinforcing materials are also lighter than traditional building materials, weighing about one-fifth of the steel reinforcement used on most bridges. That could reduce labor costs involved in building bridges, he said.

DOT officials say they are anxious to see how construction of the Waupan bridge goes utilizing the FRP structures. If successful, the technology could be used on bridge projects throughout the state, according to Mark Klipstein, a project manager for the DOT's District 2 office in Waukesha.

"It gives us an alternative source of construction materials," he said. "It gives us an option for future bidding of bridges. Once this is done, and if it's proven effective, it creates more competitive bidding."

Although the cost of FRP materials is slightly more expensive than traditional steel reinforcing, Bank said the long-term cost savings of using well-designed FRP materials should make it a popular technology for future bridge projects.

"That's really what we want to prove - that there's an advantage to using these FRP materials," he said.

Contact: Larry Bank
608/262-1604