STRESS, DISPLACEMENT, AND BUCKLING ANALYSIS OF A STEEL PLATE GIRDER

Abstract

With the increase in population and development of civilization, the demand for transportation infrastructure is increased at peak rate. Especially in towns due to rapid industrialization, the demand is extremely high. Adapting the construction of plate girder bridges is the efficient and economical way of meeting the traffic demands for the purpose of railways and also for the bridges connecting the land masses separated by water bodies. Hence it is mandatory for a Structural Engineer to be knowledgeable about the analysis of such plate girders employed in the construction of bridges and also as heavy beams in buildings where large open area is required.
Advancements of Finite Element Analysis software packages have significantly made ease to the designers in achieving the best optimum results with utmost precision and accuracy in their work. The finite element analysis of steel plate girder in this study is carried out using sophisticatedly programmed software ABAQUS SIMULIA in a much feasible manner in least possible time. In this study an attempt has been made to evaluate the different types of stresses, displacements and buckling mode shapes of 8 different steel plate girder models and the results have been compared of all the different plate girders comprising diverse shaped (viz., circular, elliptical, chamfered square) web openings with that of the plate girders without web openings taking into consideration the two different sets of models, one set of models comprising flanges thickness size bearing 25mm and the other set of models bearing flange thickness 40mm. After performing the entire analysis it has been found that plate girders with soft web openings are considerably showing good performance and leading to the efficient, economical and safe design saving the overall material cost