*New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is embarking on a $419 million dollar project to replace the upper deck of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Roughly 190,000 vehicles cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge daily and it is one of the longest suspension bridges in the world, as it connects New York City boroughs Staten Island and Brooklyn. The bridge opened 1964, and by now the maintenance of the deck is getting to be very costly. One of the project goals is to ensure that the replacement deck will last one hundred years.
The Verrazano's new deck will be a steel orthotropic deck that is more resilient than its current concrete one. This is because the steel running along traffic will be rigid and the steel runnning perpendicular to the flow of traffic will be relatively flexible. The new Verrazano design also requires less material overall, and the steel is expected to corrode at a slower pace than its concrete predecessor.
Testing of the deck's components is already underway. This photo was taken at Lehigh University's Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems (ATLSS) Center where researchers are running stress tests on a prototype of replacement-deck segments.**
The tests simulate the weight and movement of vehicles, applying pressure to the deck in a sequence just as a moving vehicles would. The other focus of the testing is to hasten wear and tear on the prototype deck segments. By inflicting decades of use on the parts in a matter of months, the project team can adjust the design rapidly. Once the parts are ready, the new deck will be assembled like the pieces of a puzzle: segment by segment, lane by lane.
*Photo Credit: Michael Brandon.
** Photo Credit: Lehigh University
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