Corrugated inner wall connections for composite Rahmen bridges: Advancing design and construction efficiency

A composite Rahmen bridge consists of a superstructure with steel girders and concrete slabs, offering excellent structural performance. Compared to conventional reinforced concrete (RC) Rahmen bridges, composite versions enable longer spans and reduced girder heights under equivalent span conditions, making them ideal for replacing aging bridges. However, longer spans increase section forces at corners where substructure and superstructure connect, leading to issues such as cracks. To address these challenges and reduce construction time, this study proposed a composite Rahmen bridge utilizing corrugated load-bearing connections. The prefabricated bridge type was introduced as an alternative to the cast-in-place concrete method to overcome its drawbacks and accelerate construction. Structural experiments on a bridge with newly designed connection details confirmed that the structural performance met required standards while simplifying construction processes, a key disadvantage of traditional composite Rahmen bridges. Testing the behavior of members with filler material strengths of 40 MPa and 60 MPa revealed failure loads exceeding the yield load. Calculated safety factors were 1.08 and 1.35, respectively, confirming the system's structural safety. These findings validate the proposed system's feasibility for real-world applications, demonstrating its potential to enhance construction efficiency and reliability in composite Rahmen bridge projects.