Integral abutment bridges

Integral abutment bridges. Within the design and construction of bridges, questions of sustainability maintenance and durability become more and more important for European road administrations in addition to safety and serviceability issues. Therefore integral abutment bridges turn out to become highly attractive to designers, constructors and road administrations. The main reason for this is that they tend to be less expensive to build, easier to maintain and more economical to own over their life time. This is principally due to the non-existence of bearings and joints, that are main sources of maintenance costs during life time. However in most European countries only few experience with integral bridges has been gained so far Thus road administrations often are reluctant in using types of bridges like this. Nowadays this lack is more and more filled. Therefore with further assessment the share of integral abutment bridges in the European bridge stock has the potential to increase significantly with the advantage of reduced maintenance costs.