04.06: Post‐buckling strength of plate girders subjected to shear: Experimental verification

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper describes a calculation method for steel plate girders with transverse web stiffeners subjected to shear. It may be used for predicting the failure load or, as a design method, to determine the optimal amount of internal web stiffeners. The method is based on the theory of plasticity. Many other theories have been developed, but the method presented differs from these theories by incorporating the strength of the transverse stiffeners and by the assumption that the tensile bands may pass the transverse stiffeners, which often is observed in tests. Other methods have only dealt with a single web field between two stiffeners.The load‐carrying capacity may be predicted by applying both the lower‐bound theorem and the upper‐bound theorem. The upper‐bound solutions have shown very good correlation with existing tests. The emphasis is attached to the presentation of the tests conducted at the Technical University of Denmark. The test programme contained six full scale plate girder specimens. The agreement between the theory and the tests is very good.