Shear strength and behavior of transversely stiffened tubular flange plate girders

An analytical investigation is conducted to study the shear behavior of transversely stiffened hollow tubular flange plate girders with rectangular tubes for both the compression and tension flanges. A three-dimensional finite element model is proposed using ABAQUS (version 6.8) software. In the current model, an initial geometrical imperfection of (L/1000) as well as geometrical and material nonlinearities are included, where L denotes the span of the girder. A parametric study is carried out on simply supported hollow tubular flange plate girders regarding the span length, the flange cross-section dimensions, and the thickness and the aspect ratio of the web. The shear strengths of the hollow tubular flange plate girders are determined from the current finite element models and then compared to the unfactored design strengths computed according to Eurocode 3. It is found that the results of the design equations specified by the European specifications are highly conservative compared to the results of the finite element models. A modified Eurocode 3 design method is adopted to calculate the nominal shear strength of hollow tubular flange plate girders based on the finite element modelling and analysis results.

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