Steel plate-light weight concrete hollow composite deck was a type of novel composite deck which composed of steel plate, perforbond ribs connectors (PBL connectors) and light weight concrete and steel pipe. In order to understand the hollow composite decks mechanical performance, Static experiments of five specimens of this hollow composite slabs were conducted, among which two specimens were composed with longitudinal steel pipes and three specimens were composed with transversal steel pipe, with the aim to study the difference of the mechanical behaviors of the composite decks at the two orthogonal directions. Based on the experiment results, the effects of the direction of steel pips and the nominal shear-span of the slabs on the composite decks mechanical performance were especially studied. During the experiment process, the failure modes, strains of concrete and steel plate, cracking type, slippage of interface and the bearing capacity of the decks were studied in detail. From the experimental study, it could be found that there were no slippage between the steel plate and concrete were measured at the composite bridge decks, and the composite bridge decks showed high flexural rigidity, good ductility as well as better bearing capacity with the strength of bottom steel plate and top concrete both fully utilized. Therefore, it could be concluded that this type of composite bridge decks have good advantages at mechanical behaviors.

Based on the experiment results of five plain steel plate-light weight concrete hollow deck specimens, the design methods of the composite decks which mainly including the calculation method of the bearing capacity and calculation method of the flexural rigidity were introduced. In the paper, the bearing capacity and flexural rigidity of the composite at two orthogonal directions, which including the direction parallel to the pipes and the direction perpendicular to the pipes, were both introduced. The calculation results of the bearing capacity and middle-span deflection were in good agreement with those of the experimental results, and in the return calculation methods were verified. Therefore, the design methods and calculation methods were useful to the design of this new type composite deck.