RESEARCH ON ALTERNATIVE

MATERIALS FOR GANTRIES

SMP Structures Peer to Peer Meeting No.27

____________________________________________
Anish Roy and Marianna Imprialou
Loughborough University
3rd August 2017
Introduction

Project Aim: To explore the possibilities of developing road

side infrastructure solutions from materials other than
traditional steel.

Key Deliverable: A comprehensive review of what solutions

are out there that will replicate the performance of current
engineering solutions without the downsides associated with
them.
Loughborough team

Chris Goodier PhD BEng pgCert MCIOB MICT FHEA,

Senior Lecturer in Structures and Materials,
School of Civil and Building Engineering

Anish Roy, PhD, FHEA, CEng, MIMechE, MInstP,

Reader in Mechanics of Materials and Processes,
School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Marianna Imprialou PhD MEng,

Lecturer in Transport Engineering,
School of Civil and Building Engineering

Thanh Nguyen, MSc, BSc,

Researcher in concrete materials and civil engineering,
School of Civil and Building Engineering
Background

Currently: steel gantries needed to support the large and very heavy
equipment currently in use on the HE network.

HE’s ultimate aspiration:

minimise number of assets we install,
have everything in the verge, and
transfer more and more information through in-car technology.

As technology progresses and the assets providing information, such as

AMIs, LED, MS4s etc become lighter or redundant, it could be argued that
steel would no longer be necessary.

Alternative materials could bring efficiencies with regards to manufacturing

and installation time and costs.
SCOPE - WHAT’S IN, WHAT’S OUT

IN
roadside infrastructure solutions for smart motorways
materials other than traditional steel
replicate the performance of current engineering solutions

Emphasis on lightweight in nature, e.g. aluminium, and composites such

as GRP and FRP.
15 year design life, not 30 or 60

OUT:
non motorways
foundations (directly)
other driver information or communication techniques or technologies
DRIVERS

Cost:
gantry installation cost; foundation cost; congestion cost; road closure cost

Safety:
installation, closure, in use

External
sustainability, lack of skills/materials
/ replacement for steel gantries

SHORT TO MEDIUM TERM

Aluminium

Popular lightweight materials in the EU

e.g. France, Germany, Spain etc.
one of longest aluminium overhead road-sign structures on Frances's
highway A63.
Two 41-metre portal gantries, 11 tonnes.
GFRP BRIDGE INSTALLED IN THE UK

52 m, Fiberline’s FBD 600 bridge deck

Arup and Mabey, Oxford, 2017
profiles
two-thirds the weight of deck it replaces,
stronger and offers cost savings through
reduced maintenance.
FRP reinforced structures

Carbon fibre cables – Storchen

Bridge, Switz
/Materials, Design and Solutions

MATERIALS FOR FUTURE

GANTRIES
Aluminium foam
Essentially porous Al – this is done using some (cheap) foaming agents.
Advantage:
Light weight (can be customised)
Mechanically strong as Al (essentially it’s the same material)
Recyclable
(demo) high speed train cab assembled from aluminium foam
components/metal sandwich by the Fraunhofer Institute. The sandwich is
self-supporting and does not require the heavy metal frames required by
GRP. The metal foam offers good mechanical properties, fire protection,
fatigue strength and weldability, with a 20% weight saving compared to a
more traditional metal cab.

Car components: 12% of the weight of solid Al.

Ideal for compression beams in crash structure or components incurring fatigue loads.
Known applications are in an Audi, a Bentley, and a Ferrari
Metal Matrix Composites

Aluminium based MMCs are one of the most popular candidate for
aerospace and automotive industry.
Al-based MMCs:
aluminium-boron (Al-B),
aluminium-graphite (Al-Gr)
aluminium-silicon carbide (Al-SiC)
Thermal cycling
EM shielding Mid-fuselage structure of Space Shuttle Orbiter
showing boron-aluminum tubes
Manufacturing of these are consistent

Cast SiCp/Al attachment fittings: multi-inlet fitting for a truss node

Green Composites

Use of natural fibres as reinforcements

kenaf, hemp, flax, jute, sisal and wood

Good ecological credentials (when compared to glass-fibre mats).

The energy consumption to produce a flax-fibre mat is 9.55 MJ/kg, including
cultivation, harvesting, and fibre separation.
This amounts to approximately 17% of the energy to produce a glass-fibre mat
which is 54.7 MJ/kg
Nano-tech: Graphene

Graphene is essentially a 2D material (sheet with an atomic thickness).

Incredibly high tensile strength and modulus.
Other forms include Graphene Oxide (GO), multi-layer graphene (MLG),
graphite nano-plates/flakes
Ideal for coating
Strengthening as reinforcements
interlaminar shear strength of CFRP improved from 60 MPa to 93 MPa with
minimal amount GO functionalised with carbon fibres
pristine graphene used as the filler in an epoxy matrix: resulting in 38%
increase in strength, 37% improvement in modulus for 0.46 vol.% graphene
loading

o Research is still very ‘blue sky’

Nano-tech: CNT

hollow tube-shaped material with diameters of 0.7 nm to 50 nm and

lengths in hundreds of microns.
Very strong materials
Light weight (10 gm/km)
Commercially available as sheets, tapes and yarns
CNT composites
(essentially graphene rolled into pipes)

CNT yarn overwrapped a 2 litre

aluminium pressure vessel
Functional Composites

Essentially composite structures that have added functionality such as

energy harvesting, storage in addition to mechanical strength.

Schematic of the architecture of a structural battery with carbon

fabric anode, polymer electrolyte acting also as matrix, and an
oxide-based active (US Army)

Schematic of a fiber laminate

composite that can operate as a
capacitor
Manufacturing: AM of Metals

Metal printing using two technologies

PBF (Powder Bed Fusion)
DED (Direct Energy Deposition)

Printing in Al, Ti, Stainless steel has been reported.

o Issues with anisotropy (print direction induced)

o Printing/manufacturing time
Organic designs possible
Fully optimised solutions

Ti-64
Manufacturing: AM of Concrete

The bridge, which is in a park just outside of Madrid,

is 12 metres long and 1.75 metres wide. The bridge
is made up of eight different parts, each made of
concrete powder micro-reinforced with thermoplastic
polypropylene

The 3D printed bridge, meanwhile, is

expected to be ready in two months and will
form part of a roundabout at the
Handelseweg Boekelseweg (N605) and the
Peeldijk (N272); it is expected to be placed
in September 2017
 Specific
Specific stiffness Normalised
Normalised Elastic modulus Yield Normalised Strength
Material/ Material groups Density (kg/m3) specific
density (GPa) strength (MPa) specific stiffness
strength
(Modulus/densi (Strength/densi
ty) ty)
Steel * 7820 1.00 203 200 0.03 1.00 0.03 1.00
Aluminium 2840 0.36 71 150 0.03 0.96 0.05 2.07
Aluminium foam 800 0.10 0.1 1.24 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.06
Concrete 2400 0.31 17 2 0.01 0.27 0.00 0.03

GRP [50% v/v] VinylEster 2000 0.26 41 12 0.02 0.79 0.01 0.23

Green composites (Mater-Bi) 1350 0.17 0.53 6.7 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.19
Green composites
6.3 45
Kenaf/PLLA

Graphene 7.61e-7 kg/m2 0.00 1000 130 HIGH HIGH

Titanium 4506 0.58 114 1450 0.03 0.97 0.32 12.58

CNT 1600 0.20 270 11000 0.17 6.50 6.88 268.81

0.32 0.14 5.28 0.36 14.15

MMC (Graphite/ Al) 2500 342.5 905

0.35 0.09 3.35 0.41 15.93

MMC (B/Al) 2700 235 1100
Appraisal Criteria

Construction cost
Maintenance cost [15 yrs] + Maintenance frequency
Demolition cost
Material cost
Aesthetics incl. size
Sustainability
Recyclability
Carbon footprint
Modularity
Functional characteristics (crash protection/safety)
Vibration stability (for sensors)
RESEARCH ON ALTERNATIVE
MATERIALS FOR GANTRIES

Thank you
____________________________________________
Anish Roy and Marianna Imprialou
Loughborough University