Live Load Distribution of Prestressed Concrete Girder Bridge with Curved Slab

Abstract

The existing AASHTO Standard Specification have some inadequacies in expressing wheel load distribution of bridge which has specific shape of curved bridge instead of straight bridge. Thus, this research presented the finite element analysis and modelling technique of prestressed concrete girder bridge having curved slab and the expression of wheel load distribution was suggested as the ratio of bending moment utilizing the result of finite element analysis of prestressed concrete girder bridge having cowed slab. The considered parameter of girder distribution expression is the curvature of slab, span length, girder space, cross beam space and number of lanes. Though the suggested girder distribution expression is generally underestimated below AASHTO Standard Specification, once the curvature of slab increases, the suggested expression gets larger than AASHTO LRFD Standard Specification.