Design and Performance of Jointless Bridges in Ontario: New Technical and Material Concepts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It is well recognized that leaking expansion joints at the ends of bridge decks have led to the premature deterioration of bridge components. The elimination of these maintenance-prone joints not only yields immediate economic benefits but also improves the long-term durability of bridges. In Ontario, Canada, “jointless” bridges have been used for many years. Recently, the use of two main types of these bridges has increased dramatically. The first type is an “integral abutment” bridge that comprises an integral deck and abutment system supported on flexible piles. The approach slabs are also continuous with the deck slab. The flexible foundation allows the anticipated deck movements to take place at the end of the approach slab. Control joint details have been developed to allow movements at this location. The second type is a “semi-integral abutment” bridge that also allows expansion joints to be eliminated from the end of the bridge deck. The approach slabs are continuous with the deck slab, and the abutments are supported on rigid foundations (spread footings). The superstructure is not continuous with the abutments, and conventional bearings are used to allow horizontal movements between the deck and the abutments. A control joint is provided at the end of the approach slab that is detailed to slide in between the wing walls. Some of the design methods and construction details that are used in Ontario for integral and semi-integral abutment bridges are summarized. A review of the actual performance of existing bridges is also presented.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".