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Rebar for the bridge foundations has arrived on site. The contractor still has a one or two more weeks before he begins forming the foundations and walls and setting the rebar.
The green on the rebar is an epoxy coating that helps protect the steel from corrosion due to road salts and other environmental factors. All newer bridges in Michigan use type of rebar due to the heavy use of de-icing salts in the winter months here.
The rebar is delivered to the site tied and bundled according the location on the bridge where it will be used. For example, the north end of the bridge vs south end, or the footing vs the retaining walls. One of my jobs in design is to size the rebar and calculate the lengths and bends that will be needed to build the bridge. And then show on the drawings where every piece of rebar belongs. As you can imagine, this is a massively tedious job, but as a nerdy engineer I love doing it!
…that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about rebar.
The footing at the north abutment has been poured. The footing is 4 feet thick, 90 feet long, and took approximately 150 cubic yards of concrete to construct which is about 18 truck loads worth of concrete. That’s a lot of mud! To support the weight of all this concrete when it’s wet, the formwork is braced in the front and back to prevent the forms from blowing out.
Projecting out of the footing concrete are dowel bars which will connection the concrete in the walls, which is yet to be poured, to the footing.