Behavior of steel-concrete composite plate girders

Abstract

This paper is concerned with experimental investigations on simply supported steel-concrete composite plate girders under shear loading. Four composite plate girders and two bare steel plate girders have been tested to failure in order to study the ultimate strength behavior. The investigation focuses on the variation in tension field action of plate girder webs due to the composite action of the deck slab. Extensive strain readings have been made on web panels in order to measure the extent of tension field. The ultimate shear capacity and the tension field width of composite plate girders are found to have increased significantly compared to bare steel girders. Experimental results have been used to validate the accuracy of finite element modeling.