Girder Load Share for the Curved I-Girder Bridge Subjected to the Point Load

Abstract

The objective of this research is to study experimentally and theoretically the girder vertical load share of the curved I-Girder bridges subjected to the point load in addition to the self-weigh and supper imposed dead loads. The experimental program consist of manufacturing and testing the five simply supported bridge models was scaled down by (1/10) from a prototype of 30m central span. The models carriageway central radii are 30 m, 15m or 10m. The girder spacing of the first two models is 175 mm with an overall carriageway width of 650mm. The girder spacing of the other three bridge models is 200mm with the overall carriageway width of 700 mm. The overall depth of the composite section was 164 mm. To investigate the effect of live load position on the girder vertical load share a point load was applied at different load levels and was varied across bridge width. Experimental results show that the main factor effect on the girder load share were the point load position, load level and the bridge curvature value, while the girder spacing had a less effect than that. The ANSYS Worckbench 14.5 commercial software was adopted to build up the Finite Element model. Results have shown that the numerical model was slightly stiffer than the experimental test bridge model. A good agreement was obtained between the experimental and analytical results for all models, the maximum deviation in results reach to13% in such a single case, while the convergence results are the prevailing situation.