Infrastructure Composites is Completing a Modular Composite Bridge Here in Colorado, to be Trucked to Fairview Heights, IL., for IDOT, the Illinois Department of Transportation.

by John Gaudio,

There's a company building advanced composite bridges right here in Denver, CO.  Infrastructure Composites International, Infracomp.com, is finishing up a composite bridge for IDOT, the Illinois Department of Transportation, and the city of Fairview Heights. This project is part of the Innovative Bridge Research and Construction (IBRC) program administered by the Federal Highway Administration. The program's objective is to evaluate and introduce advanced materials and promising new technologies in an effort to rehabilitate the nation’s aging infrastructure.

The first three of the four sections of this 38ft long composite vehicular bridge have been trucked to Illinois.  Visit Flickr.com to see the first three completed sections, along with some of the tools and components used to build this new type of composite bridge.  The last of the four sections leaves the plant tomorrow, to be delivered late this month, January 2010, for final assembly in Fairview Heights, Illinois, in collaboration with Keeley and Sons, contractors.

These lightweight composite bridges typically weigh 70-80% less than traditional steel or concrete bridges, making the installation of a complete bridge much faster, easier, and less expensive, when compared to installation of typical bridges.  Pre fabricated bridges like these have a projected lifetime of 50-75 years, and can be installed at the site in one day, avoiding lengthy road shutdowns and traffic disruption with their associated costs.

In addition to complete bridges, this technology can be used to put new decks on older bridges, making it possible to re-rate those older bridges for a much greater traffic load than that for which they were originally designed. This solves a common problem with bridges built decades ago for lower load ratings.  Why can these bridges be re-rated?  Because the existing structure now has to support only 20-30% of the static deck load for which it was originally designed, leaving a great deal more capacity for increased traffic loads, thus eliminating the need for a new bridge. This makes it possible to save tremendous amounts of money, time, and labor when compared with the cost of replacing existing bridges with conventional steel and concrete technologies.

Infrastructure Composites can be reached at 858-537-0715.
 
(Disclosure: I have known John Kunz for over 20 years, and own a small amount of stock in Infrastructure Composites.)