STEEL BRIDGE GIRDER WITH CORRUGATED WEB

Abstract

Corrugated web girder is a relatively new concept. Corrugated web girders are built up girders with thin walled corrugated web and plate flanges. The corrugated shape of the web has numerous advantages over the conventional flat web girders. The main purpose of corrugation is enhancement of the shear capacity. By using corrugated web the shear capacity of the girder is greatly enhanced by the shape of the corrugated web. In addition to this increase in shear capacity by providing corrugation it is found that buckling capacity of flanges also increases. There is a peculiar behaviour of corrugated web in that when pre-stressing force is applied, the web behaves like an accordion and fold easily which is called accordion effect. Due to this accordion effect the axial stiffness and bending stiffness of the girder with corrugated web decreases. The load shared by the web of corrugated web girder in resisting bending also decreases. Based on various experimental and numerical studies, it is found that there is no shear and moment interaction in corrugated web girder. Bending moment is carried by the flanges and shear forces are carried by the web. There are mainly two types of corrugations, sinusoidal and trapezoidal corrugations. In this dissertation, study is conducted on trapezoidal corrugations. Using closed form solutions comparison of flat web girder and corrugated web girder is carried out. Parametric studies are conducted by using FEM based software to study the accordion effect, study the influence of geometry of corrugation on buckling load of the web and flange. Comparison of composite flat web girder and composite corrugated web girder for a steel concrete bridge is also carried out.