Design of the St Austell Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Footbridge, UK
摘要整理
AbstractThe St Austell Footbridge is a lightweight glass fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) structure comprising pultruded and moulded elements, which crosses a railway line in St Austell, UK. When it was installed in October 2007, it was the first structure on the UK rail network to be entirely constructed from FRP materials. The bridge structure was designed to satisfy the aesthetic and environmental requirements of the client. Through rapid installation and the minimisation of any maintenance requirements, it has delivered economic, operational and sustainability benefits. This paper presents some of the design issues encountered in developing the innovative structure. These include the development of techniques and design philosophies to enhance the structure's robustness through careful consideration of the potential behaviour of the structure and its components and connections up to the ultimate limit state. It also describes how the design was developed to ensure that vibrations caused by trains or pedestrians would be adequately controlled at the serviceability limit state. The findings of the research regarding behaviour of lightweight structures subject to aerodynamic impulses associated with passing trains are presented, and the corresponding effect on the design development is described. Also described in this paper are the regimes of testing and monitoring that were developed to ensure that the structure and its components were behaving as expected.Key words:: fibre-reinforced polymeradvanced compositesfootbridgedesignrobustnessvibrationbuffetinginnovation