Alternative Deck System for Moveable Bridges M.A. Saleem 1 , A. Mirmiran 2 , J. Xia 3 and K. Mackie 4 1 PhD Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33174, E-mail: msale005@fiu.edu 2 Corresponding author, Professor and Dean, College of Engineering and Computing, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33174, E-mail: mirmiran@fiu.edu 3 PhD Candidate, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, E-mail: junxia@mail.ucf.edu 4 Assistant Professor, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, E-mail: kmackie@mail.ucf.edu ABSTRACT Florida has the largest stock of moveable bridges in the United States. More than half of these bridges are located along the inter-coastal waterways in Miami and Ft Lauderdale. Most of the moveable bridges use open grid steel decks. These open grid decks have several disadvantages, including poor skid resistance, high maintenance costs, high noise levels, and susceptibility to vibrations. It is therefore desirable to find alternative deck systems with better performance. Three potential deck systems: a lightweight aluminum bridge deck system made by SAPA Group (Sweden), a waffle shape reinforced ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) deck system, and a fiber-reinforced polymer tube-UHPC composite deck system were selected for further development and experimental testing. The first system is currently commercially available while the latter two systems are newly proposed composite systems. The component-level tests on all three systems and system-level tests on the first two systems are presented in this paper. Results confirm that the first system is a feasible alternative (already available) to the open grid steel decks from a strength and serviceability point of view. The proposed UHPC composite systems are promising alternatives based on preliminary results. INTRODUCTION According to the national bridge inventory (2008), Florida has a total of 148 moveable bridges, of which 90% are bascule, 7% swing and 3% lift. In addition, 72 moveable bridges in Florida are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop new techniques, materials, and systems for rehabilitation and replacement of these deteriorated structures (Vyas et al. 2009). Most of the moveable bridges currently use open grid steel decks. These decks have several problems including poor skid resistance and rideability, costly maintenance, high noise levels and susceptibility to vibrations (Mirmiran et al. 2009). In the context of addressing the aforementioned issues and to rehabilitate the structurally deficient bridges, development of innovative lightweight bridge deck systems is one of the active areas of research. Over the last decade, several researchers have carried out significant work to develop bridge decks using fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs), 403 2010 Structures Congress © 2010 ASCE