DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN TOOL FOR BRIDGE DECK SLAB

Abstract

The present work deals with the behavior of simply supported rectangular plates loaded under patch loads. The study has been done using the classical plate theory and influence surfaces have been drawn for various cases. Some Finite Element analysis has been done to investigate whether there is significant difference between the results obtained by the two methods. The influence line concept and tabular works in case of linear members are highly appreciated. For the analysis of continuous beams and frames design formulae and tables are givren in various books and handbooks°11. But in case of plates (especially in the case of bridge slabs), the given formulae and tables are very limited in scope. The most widely used method is the Piguead's method in which we find the moment coefficients from the various curves given by Piguead. This formulation is for symmetrically placed central patch loads. In case of non — central loads, we do various manipulations, to make it a combination of symmetrical central loads, which leads to accumulated errors. With the present work, the bending moments in both the directions can be found from the influence surfaces developed and the tabular results obtained for patch loads placed anywhere on the plate. The classical plate theory was used for formulation and programs written in MATLAB. For the Finite Element analysis ANSYS package is used.