Experimental and numerical characterization of a membrane material for orthotropic steel deck bridges: Part 1: Experimental work and data interpretation

Preliminary analyses have shown that membrane materials, connecting mastic asphalt surfacings to plates of orthotropic steel deck bridges, play an extremely important role in determining the structural response of these types of bridges. This necessitates search for a realistic representation of the behaviour of membrane materials. For this purpose, an extensive experimental program was carried out, and a non-linear constitutive model was developed to describe the behaviour of a membrane material.This is the first of two papers on characterization of the behaviour of a bituminous-based membrane material in an orthotropic steel deck bridge. In this paper, results of an experimental program executed on a membrane material will be presented. In this program, the TU-Delft four-point shear test was used to characterize the response of a membrane material to shear and normal forces. In particular, the influence of temperature, deformation rate and confinement on the shear strength, the shear stiffness and the deformation at failure are identified.