Planning, design and construction of bridges and flyovers is very challenging at places with space constraints. There has been rapid development with the availability of high strength steel and concrete. With the increasing span of these structures large number of continuous bridge is being constructed especially using precast segmental construction. There has been improvement in code of practices in India with the introduction of limit state design method, Special Vehicle (SV) loading and fatigue load for bridge design. This has led to the design of bridge bearing as well. In this paper an attempt has been made to discuss these developments and some of their implications.
Introduction
There has been advancement in the area of bridge engineering in India with the introduction of limit state design philosophy, new special vehicle loads and fatigue vehicle for bridge design and usage of construction materials with high strength. Considering these developments and giving importance to durability aspects, it is possible to achieve target design life of 100 years for concrete bridges. With increase in span length of the bridges, more number of continuous bridges (three of four span units) is being built during the last two decades which has led to the development of high capacity bridge bearings, POT bearing, POT-PTFE bearing sand spherical bearings. Also, modular expansion joints have replaced the widely used strip seal expansion joints in many bridges.
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