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Delaware Road Bridge in Riegelsville Borough

Students:

  1. Julia Baaklini,
  2. Casey Fontana (Team Leader),
  3. Ashley Napovier,
  4. Nicholas Villaverde

Advisors: V. Krstic, A. Bechtel

Delaware Road Bridge is a 50-ft single span bridge located over the Delaware Canal in Riegelsville, Pennsylvania.  The bridge is travelled daily as it offers the only route to access the nearby Riegelsville Bridge across the Delaware River.  Delaware Road Bridge is in need of expansion from a narrow single travel lane to two lanes to provide traffic flow in both directions.  Excessive structural cracking is present and complete replacement of the bridge is proposed.  The project goal was to provide a design for the structural and geotechnical components of the bridge to meet these requirements.  In addition, the bridge must aesthetically resemble adjacent bridges over the canal. For the structural design, the bridge was chosen to have a width of 28 feet allowing for two 12 foot travel lanes and parapets on each side.  It was determined through analysis of the Strength I load combinations that three 40×167 steel girders will support the dead and live loads on the concrete deck, and it was verified that the shear capacity of the design was sufficient.  A 3-D model was created in Visual Analysis so that computer results could be compared to hand calculations.  The geotechnical design included a subsurface analysis, groundwater cutoff considerations, and the design of the abutments for both Delaware Road Bridge and the temporary bridge.  A soil profile was created based on boring logs.  Four granular strata, one cohesive stratum, and Dolomite bedrock were identified.  A cofferdam with sheetpile and wale components was designed to facilitate the construction of the concrete footings.  Computer software SPW911 was used to analyze the stability of Arbed AZ36 sheetpile based on varying groundwater table locations.  An average of 1.3 gpm of water was predicted to seep into the enclosed area. A pump will operate during the construction phases to dewater the abutment locations.  The bridge abutments were designed as concrete cantilever retaining walls with wing walls on each side. The abutment walls are 25 feet in height, 28 feet in width, and 35 feet in length. The wing walls are 25 feet in height, 19 feet in width, and 28 feet in length. A temporary bridge foundation was designed as two 4 feet by 4 feet square footings on each side of the canal. The prefabricated temporary bridge will serve as a passageway during the construction of the Delaware Road Bridge construction.

Student Website

Contact

Armstrong Hall, Room 165
The College of New Jersey
P.O. Box 7718
2000 Pennington Rd.
Ewing, NJ 08628

609.771.2538
engineer@tcnj.edu

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