Q. Show the Excessive movement joints in bridges?
Movement joints are generally added to bridge structures to accommodate movements because of dimensional changes arising from temperature variation, shrinkage, creep and effect of pre-stress. Though the provision of excessive movement joints must be avoided in design since movement joints always encounter problems giving rise to trouble in normal operation and this increases the cost of maintenance.
A number of designers can prefer to add more movement joints to guard against possible occurrence of differential settlements. Though the effect of continuity is disabled by this excessive introduction of movement joints. Basically the structural reserve provided by a continuous bridge is destroyed by multiple-span statically determinate structure resulting from the addition of excessive joints.