Orthotropic deck

This allows the fabricated deck both to directly bear vehicular loads and to contribute to the bridge structure's overall load-bearing behaviour.

All these various choices for the stiffening elements, e.g., ribs, floor beams and main girders, can be interchanged, resulting in a great variety of orthotropic panels.

[1] The steel deck-plate-and-ribs system may be idealized for analytical purposes as an orthogonal-anisotropic plate, hence the abbreviated designation “orthotropic.” The stiffening elements can serve several functions simultaneously.

Resistance to use of an orthotropic deck relates mainly to its cost of fabrication, due to the amount of welding involved.

The lower total gross weight of the superstructure allowed bridge launching from both ends of the Millau Viaduct.

The form is also widely used on bascule and other moveable bridges where significant savings in the cost of the mechanical elements can be made where a lighter deck is used.

The Mumbai Trans Harbour Link, also called Atal Setu, is India's first orthotropic steel deck bridge.

[4] Another notable example, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, completed in 1937, originally used a concrete deck.