Numerical Modelling of Solid and Perforated Horizontally Curved Steel Plate Girders

Abstract

Through last decades, the behaviour of the curved steel plate girder has been investigated either curved vertically or horizontally in order to study the failure modes and how to increase its ultimate strength and its capacity. Horizontally curved steel bridges have been fabricated and designed commonly in many countries for decades to support more efficiently. Furthermore, curved steel plate girders were used to present a beautiful shape in the buildings. Even though, the usage of curved girders faces some difficulties in their fabrication because of the high cost related to construction, raw materials and erection, besides this type of girders are difficult in stability specially during lifting. For many decades, massive experiments and finite element models were carried out to extract design guidelines for horizontally curved steel plate girders (HCSPGs). Horizontally curved plate girders are subjected to different failure mechanisms such as: torsion (warping), large deflection, local torsional buckling of the flanges, shear buckling at the web panels, tension field action (TFA) of the web and lateral torsional buckling (LTB). According to the AASHTO specification [1], many researchers have investigated the behaviour of HCSPGs in order to improve their shear resistance and their torsional moment capacity as well and to enhance the ultimate bearing capacity and the girder’s strength. In this paper, two finite element (FE) models have been developed using Abaqus software [2] to verify the experimental tests implemented by other studies and to compare these experimental results with the developed FE results.

Keywords

• horizontally curved steel plate girders
• torsional behaviour
• lateral torsional buckling
• tension field action
• vertical stiffeners