NO-TENSION FINITE-ELEMENT AND MECHANISM ANALYSES OF A HALF-SCALE BEAM-AND-SLAB BRIDGE DECK

TRRL recently tested a half-scale model of a bridge deck consisting of eight prestressed concrete inverted T-Beams and an in-situ reinforced concrete slab. The present report compares the experimental collapse load with: (1) finite element results based on a no-tension elasto-plastic model, and (2) manually-computed, mechanism (or plastic) calculations. (a)