Students design composite bridges

The paper gives an overview of recent research on steel-concrete composite bridge design by students of Delft University of Technology doing their master's thesis. Primary objective of this research was to find possibilities for application of steel-concrete composite bridges in the Netherlands, where opposed to neighbouring countries only a few composite bridges are being build. Various bridge designs are analysed including box girders, truss bridges and bridges with corrugated webs. The research covered road, railway and pedestrian bridges, as well as various construction methods like incremental launching, lifting and the free-cantilevering method. A number of studies have been awarded by either the Netherlands steel society or the Netherlands concrete society. One of the designs even became the tender design for the crossing of the high-speed train over the Hollands Diep (1100 m length