Talk:Orthotropic deck

A fact from Orthotropic deck appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 January 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that using an orthotropic deck instead of a concrete deck reduced the mass of the Golden Gate Bridge by 11,160 metric tons?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/January.

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Railway Bridges[edit]

I removed the reference to railway bridges as I don't believe it. (If someone has a specific example (& citation) then by all means please reinstate it.) Many rail bridges superficially resemble orthotropic decks because they have steel deck plates on cross beams. The deck plates play no part in the strength of the bridge (maybe some small amount but not by design); they simply stop the ballast falling out.

As to reduced deck thickness, rail bridges are more likely to be half-through than road bridges, so the main beams do not add to the deck thickness. The deck thickness is a product of the cross beams which are relatively constant regardless of the main beams.

Finally the loads on a rail bridge are fixed to the line of the rails so there is little advantage to designing for a deck plate as opposed to a road or foot bridge where loads can be spread across the deck. Dyaimz (talk) 21:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]