Introduction

1. Historical Background of Integral Abutment Bridges

In United States of America science late 1930’s and early 1940’s Ohio,
South Dakota and Oregon were the first state to adopt use of
continuous construction with IB. California followed in 1950’s.
Tennessee and other states in USA began from 1960’s.

New Zealand’s began in 1930’s and standardized design drawing for

concrete bridges for IB’s by New Zealand Ministry of Works and
Development by back 1950’s.

Britain began research on integral bridges by 1970’s and currently in

UK, the bridges with span less than 60m and skew not exceeding 30
are generally required to be continuous over intermediate piers and
integral at abutments. And cyclic movements at each abutment is
restricted to +- 20mm in case of IB’s.

In Japan, the first integral bridge was built in 1996. Generally, the
integral bridge length in Japan is restricted to 30 m. In Australia, the
integral bridge construction is practiced by Queensland Main Roads
Department (QMRD) since 1975. China began to build Integral
bridges since 1990’s.

2. Advantages and Disadvantages of using Integral Bridges

Some of the advantages of adopting integral bridge concept as against the
conventional bridge concept are summarized below:

 Added redundancy with improved seismic performance

 Improved structural reliability and redundancy
 Improved ride-quality and noise reduction
 Improved durability due to absence of expansion joints, which is the
source of moisture ingress
 Elimination of leakage onto critical structural elements
 Reduced number of foundation piles
 Reduce initial cost and long-term maintenance
 Reduced traffic disruption
  Useful concept for strengthening of existing bridges
 Increased reserve load capacity and load distribution, resulting in more
resistance to damaging effects of illegal overloads.
Some of the disadvantages of adopting integral bridge concept are summarized
below:

 Limited span range due to restraints to movements caused by thermal,

creep and shrinkage.
 Differential settlement between foundations resting on varying strata
or varying scour conditions in case of river bridges.
 Climatic conditions with large variation in maximum and minimum
ambient temperatures.
 Need for complex structural analysis involving soil-structure
interaction.

3. Integral bridges around the world

a) Panchsheel Culb Flyover, New Delhi-
The deck is RC solid slab type integral with the twin piers. The
bridge is a jointless bridge without any expansion joint over
intermediate piers without any bearings the seven-span continuous
Integral Flyover, with a 190m long stilted portion. The
superstructure is reinforced concrete voided slab type deck which is
made integral (monolithic) with the piers. The flyovers were
designed for seismic (zone IV) and duly account for the
superstructure.

b) Kalkaji Flyover, New Delhi-

A 150m integral flyover. The typical five-span continuous deck
(25m + 30m + 40m + 30m + 25m), has voided slab reinforced
concrete deck with a depth of 1.70m, which was increased to 2.20m
at the piers supporting the 40.0m obligatory main span.

c) Isola Della Scala Bridge, Verona, Italy -

Integral Abutment Bridge that located at Isola Della Scala in the
province of Verona. The total length of the structure is
approximately 400 m with 13 spans (29.9m + 11 x 31 m + 29.9m),
which is the longest integral abutment bridge in the world up to
 now. Therefore, it would be of necessity to have specialty grid-lines
for existing and future construction of integral abutment bridges.

d) Happy Hollow creek, Tennessee –

Span-358m, it is a super-long curved integral abutment bridge at
just over 1175 feet (358 m) in length. The bridge has 9 spans of
precast, prestressed concrete bulb-T girders with no expansion
bearings. The spans are ranging from 127 to 138 feet (38.8 to 42.2
m). The two-column pier bents vary in height from 51 to 91 feet
(15.5 to 27.7 m).