Additive manufacturing meta-functional composites for engineered bridge bearings: A review

One of the most important causes of bridge failure is the design and structural deficiencies of bridge bearings. Recently, typical bridge bearings with the reinforcement of steel or fibre have been widely used in base isolation system. Especially for fibre-reinforced rubber bearings, they offer numerous benefits as higher stiffness and strength, more flexibility, and decrease of transport and fabrication costs. Under vibration, common bridge bearings cannot perform well and the materials used in the bearings cannot sustain under environmental conditions. To develop the performance of these common bearings to obtain their superior physical and mechanical properties (e.g. lightweight and vibration attenuation), the use of metamaterials (periodic structures) in the bearings is considered for this reason. The current paper is the world’s first to present a comprehensive overview of the development of meta-functional composites for bridge bearing applications, exposed to both static and dynamic conditions. Also, the paper shows an approach to fabricate meta-functional composite bridge bearings via additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Furthermore, the numerical simulation has been conducted to enable new insights into the behavior of a meta-functional bridge bearing. These insights are fundamental to the performance benchmarking including the development of vibration-based condition monitoring and inspection for predictive bridge component maintenance.