Comparative Study of Prestressed Concrete Girder and Steel Plate Girder for Roadway Over Bridge

Abstract

Bridge design is an important as well as complex approach of structural engineer. As in case of bridge design, span length and live load are always important factor. These factors affect the conceptualization stage of design. Prestressed Concrete and Steel plate are commonly used for constructing bridges. This project presents the comparative study of prestressed concrete girder and steel plate girder for roadway over bridge. This work includes the cost analysis and design of prestressed concrete girder and steel girder. In the good olden days, for higher spans, steel girders whether plate girders or triangulated girders were pre-dominantly used. After the advent of pre-stressed concrete, its use in higher span bridges increased tremendously. Main reason behind use of PSC girders is due to its initial economical cost. No doubt, PSC girders are economical in the initial stage of construction, but the same may not be true if we consider the life cycle cost including other factors. The aim of this work is to design prestressed concrete and steel girder for various span and then compare the result. . Based on the understanding of the manual design procedure, a computer program in MS EXCEL was developed for designing both prestressed concrete and steel plate girder. The goal of study is to determine most favourable option from above two.