Flexural Decoupling Analysis Method of Composite Box Girder with Corrugated Steel Webs

Abstract

The existing flexural analysis methods of corrugated steel web composite box girders are either inaccurate due to thoughtlessness of the influencing factors, or complicated due to excessive consideration of the influencing factors. In this study, a flexural displacement model of composite box girder considering both the accordion effect and shear deformation of web and the shear lag effect of flange is proposed. According to the internal force balance condition, the complex flexural models of a composite box girder are decoupled into three independent simple flexural states: Euler–Bernoulli beam flexure satisfying the quasi-plane assumption, flexure of equivalent web deformation, and flexure of shear lag of flange. Based on the flexural theory of the thin-walled beam, the generalized internal force system and beam-type finite element model was established corresponding to each flexural state. The results of numerical examples show that the proposed method has high solution accuracy and can directly obtain the displacement and internal force of each flexure deformation. The moment results show that the generalized moment has a peak value at the point of shear discontinuity, and increases or decays rapidly near it.