Deterioration of the reinforced concrete slabs on highway bridges has been a severe problem in the bridge engineering. Through fatigue tests with wheel running machines developed in Japan, the failure mechanism and the fatigue strengths of RC slabs were clarified. In recent two decades, new types of bridge decks such as prestressed concrete slabs and steel plate-concrete composite decks have been developed as high durable decks for highway bridges and a remarkable innovation was introduced into the bridge engineering. The wheel trucking machines have contributed on the innovation in bridge engineering. The paper reviews those developments in the bridge deck engineering and overviews some problems to grade up the technologies.
