A novel composite bridge for emergency disaster relief: Concept and verification

Owing to recent extreme climates, typhoons, floods, and earthquakes have become large natural disaster threats in Taiwan over the years. Such natural disasters have caused damage to some bridges, consequently isolating residential communities located on mountains, and hampering the ability to delivery emergency relief supplies to those communities. In order to provide quick emergency relief, the simple construction of a temporary bridge becomes critical for the transportation of food and medical supplies into the emergency disaster areas. While composite materials for footbridges and vehicular traffic applications have been widely used overseas, they are not suitable for disaster relief applications. The objective of this paper is to present a novel bridge structure for a portable, reusable, and lightweight bridge. This paper focuses on the design concept and experimental verification of a temporary composite bridge for disaster relief. Ultimately, it advocates composite bridges for disaster relief applications.