Safety of Eurocode Model for Prediction of Shear Strength of Bridge Deck Slabs

Abstract

Deck slabs of box girder bridges designed according to the theory of allowable stresses are mostly without shear reinforcement. In the case of new bridges, designed according to Eurocodes, significantly increases an application of shear reinforcement. This raises a question: are bridges built before implementation of the Eurocodes safe? The paper deals with safety analysis of the models for prediction of the shear capacity using results of more than 40 tests carried out on clamped slabs subjected to concentrated load. The analyses have shown that methods based on an effective shear width provide unsafe results for shear span to effective depth ratio larger than 3. A significant improvement of the model's safety has been attained by limiting the distance of critical section from the inner edge of the loaded area.