Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Composite Girders with Thin Corrugated Webs

Abstract

The capacity of composite girders may depend on their web stability; thus, webs could be reinforced with stiffeners or corrugated shapes adopted to increase such stability. Developing on two previous techniques, a corrugated shape was used in a new pattern, similar to a transverse stiffener, to increase the flexural rigidity of the plate, causing the shear stability of the webs to increase. Three composite girders were manufactured using the new pattern of corrugated web and tested under static loading. The results showed that the girders with corrugated shapes had different behaviours to girders with flat webs. The examination of a composite girder with a deck slab of UHPC also revealed that the deck slab worked with the web to resist the shear stress, suggesting that the corrugated technique could be used as an alternative to reinforcing the web, especially in composite girders. This technique increased the shear strength capacity by about 44% over that of flat web composite girders. All composites failed due to the web buckling, without crushing or cracking of the UHPC deck, where the normalised shear reached 0.7 of the yield shear stress for the corrugated web. Finite element analysis using ABAQUS software was performed, which showed reasonable agreement between results and enabled the study of additional parameters without combination factors.