FRP Bridges

To some, FRP is the acronym for Fibre Reinforced Polymer, but here at ECSL we’ve stolen it for Fun Research Projects!

2022 was an exciting year for ECSL with regards to FRP structures! We had a lot of crazy ideas to work with, some our own and some from our friends at Taziker and PLURA Polydeck . Because we’ve been working in a very collaborative environment, we were able to push all those ideas forward to the point of knowing which ones were viable and which ones were maybe less so (I always say that nothing is a failure if you can take a lesson from it…). Here I just wanted to share some of those stories:

The Legacy Footbridge with Taziker – I first met Matthew Greenhalgh FICE via our mutual love of refurbishing rusty old bridges, but late in 2021 he mentioned an idea he had about creating a new bridge out of FRP that looked like an old bridge. I really like the sound of that, so offered up the time for myself and James Woollard to help him develop it. Fast forward to the end of 2022 and not only have we developed the modular design of two versions of that bridge, but we have multiple D&B contracts in the works and Matt completed the fabrication of the test bridge at Taziker ’s newest fabrication shop. The amount of R&D we’ve undertaken along the way is what has been really exciting for the team to get their teeth into. We’re already working on our first #LegacyFootbridge of 2023 with plenty more to come!

PlatformZERO with Plura – we first met Greg Parkin and his team in 2021 at Rail Live, where they had a short length of #PlatformZERO on display. I think things between our teams clicked straight away, we could see it was a great idea, whilst Greg I think appreciated myself and Darryl Whittaker poking and prodding it and doing that typical engineer thing of trying to think of ways to take this great idea and improve it (nothing is ever perfect, right?).?In 2022 we completed a fully modular design package and Greg’s team installed a permanent length of platform in time for the Hydrogen Train to arrive at Rail Live in the summer. We’ve already identified 2 or 3 projects alongside Taziker where the lightweight, modular nature of #PlatformZERO would be the perfect solution for platform replacements or extensions.

Motorway Gantries – Taking the fundamental skeleton of the Legacy FB, the ECSL team completed a concept 45m span motorway gantry which we have had pretty detailed talks with National Highways about. Although we have not had the opportunity to progress this concept much further, we learned a lot about how to create an efficient long-span truss from the materials we’ve got, which has helped us with the development on the bridges we’ve been working on. It also provided the opportunity to engage with the standards team at National Highways to assist in the development of the FRP structures material specification.

POLYbridge with Plura – wow have we designed a lot of #POLYbridges now… Imogen Hill , James Woollard and Subhabrata Kumar, BTech, MBA, GMICE, CEng [I], MIE may just be the experts on designing these, having completed the design of over 60 different iterations of the bridge to complete a modular product handbook, in addition to the dozens of bespoke-span bridges being ordered by Plura’s clients. I’d say that the team probably never need to design another #POLYbridge but 2023 is already looking like it has more challenging and bespoke uses for the bridge, with clients from all sectors interested in this as their solution of choice.

The lightweight and cost effective nature of the #POLYbridge means that it can help reduce the installation and maintenance costs, helping those with limited budgets complete projects they might not have otherwise been able to. For me personally this will be the solution used on a project for a charitable organisation which is very close to my own heart later in the year.

OLE Masts – the team at ECSL wanted to see if we could develop an OLE mast, massively reducing installation and maintenance costs as well as reducing earthing and bonding requirements.?Again, our collaborative working relationship with teams at SPL POWERLINES UK and PLURA Polydeck meant that we managed to actually build one – and then quickly learn some valuable lessons when it didn’t quite turn out as?expected. We know how to make it work but have not managed to secure additional funding to complete a second prototype, so this one is sitting on the bench for now…

These are some of our note-worthy and more challenging FRP projects, but in the background we have a railway underbridge, over-track cable crossings and long-span truss bridges edging towards installation. We’ve loved working with FRP to date because the whole ECSL team, both in the UK and India, as well as the teams at Taziker and PLURA Polydeck have been motivated by the idea that we are really pushing the boundaries of our knowledge and creating engineering solutions that will be more sustainable, ticking two of our core principals of Innovation and Sustainability.

And all that success obviously enables us to do more about the third core principal: Social Responsibility. More revenue means that we have been able to do more socially responsible activities, whether that is sponsoring worthy causes or developing our training scheme to bring more people into engineering from outside the usual pathways…

The FRP adventure was exciting in 2022, but 2023 promises to be thrilling!