Criteria and Practices of Various States for the Design of Jointless and Integral Abutment Bridges

Abstract

The design of integral abutment bridges is not explicitly addressed in the U.S. bridge design specifications. Despite the lack of a specific national design standard for such bridges, their usage has grown steadily since several states began experimenting with this type of structure in the 1980s. The primary objective of the work reported here was to understand and compare the current (2017) design criteria and parameters that are being utilized by various states for the design of jointless and integral abutment bridges. In this paper, the required information was sought by obtaining all publicly-available “bridge design manuals” that are commonly (but not universally) published by state departments of transportation. Furthermore, when such information was not available online, direct contacts were made to obtain the necessary information. Data on each state’s integral abutment preferences, pile types, pile orientation and embedment, skew angle, maximum permissible length, etc. are provided and compared.