Parametric Study of Plate Girder Using Different Stiffener Arrangement

Abstract

Plate girders are deep I-shaped beam fabricated from standard shape (steel plates, angle etc). Their flanges usually consist of plates welded with deep thin steel plate with or without stiffeners. Plate girder is widely used where very heavy loads need to be supported over large span. In India for railway bridges of short and medium span are almost reverted plate girder construction. Most analytical and experimental work on plate girders has involved only stiffeners perpendicular or parallel to the flanges. Much less effort has been devoted to inclined stiffeners, whose superior performance when compared to perpendicular stiffeners is discussed. Inclined stiffeners would have the advantage of limiting the shear factor without requiring the expensive addition of horizontal stiffeners. A wide range of cross-sectional parameters have been considered in these studies, including ratio of length of stiffener/meter span, ratio of area/ meter span, stiffener spacing, position of the stiffener through the web depth. All the stiffener length/meter span are derived from the 40 m span of plate girder according to design of IS 800:2007. The Plate girder with different stiffener arrangement are modeled and analyzed in finite element software and optimized section is found. Whichever section gives most satisfactory results would be tested experimentally under frame loading.