Behaviour of steel and (or) composite girders with corrugated steel webs

Abstract

Composite beams with corrugated steel webs represent a new innovative system which has emerged in the past decade for short and medium span bridges. The new system usually combines the usage of corrugated steel plates as webs and reinforced/prestressed concrete slabs as flanges for plate or box girders. Bridges that have been recently built with this hybrid system are outlined in this paper, which focuses on the advantages of using corrugated steel webs as opposed to traditional flat webs. The flexural behaviour and bearing resistance of girders with corrugated steel webs is briefly discussed. The flanges of the new system solely provide the flexural strength of the beam with no contribution from the corrugated web. On the other hand, the corrugated web provides the shear capacity of the system. Thus, the shear behaviour of girders with corrugated webs is explicitly discussed focusing on the different failure and (or) buckling modes that affect the design of the corrugated steel web plates. Design charts for such webs are constructed based on the different interaction equations of failure. The torsion-warping behaviour of composite box girders with corrugated steel webs is also discussed.Key words: bridges, composite beams, corrugated steel webs, global buckling mode, interactive buckling, local buckling.