BEHAVIOR OF A MODULAR COMPOSITE ARMY BRIDGE UNDER FAILURE LOADS.

Abstract

The Egyptian Army is interested in developing new lightweight short-span Composite mobile assault bridging systems that will greatly improve their tactical mobility (rapid deployment /retrievals,carry multiple bridges per launcher, minimum profile depth). In this paper, an overview of the behavior and Failure of a modular Composite Army Bridge is presented including; Army requirements, bridge design, analysis, and experimental testing program. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was used to get a detailed behavior of the modular Composite Army Bridge, as well as to predict the maximum load capacity, deflections, strains and failure modes. This paper summarizes the F.E. model used, analytical results, and the comparison with the experimental data.