Horizontal Curvature Impacts on Steel Plate Girder Shear Buckling

Current provisions for shear design of slender, steel, plate girders do not account for effects from horizontal curvature, sometimes resulting in overly conservative designs. Excess transverse stiffeners are often specified and, since they are welded to the girder web, an increased risk of fatigue could exist. This manuscript summarizes a study that investigated horizontal curvature effects on shear behavior of steel plate girders having slender webs. Two shear buckling coefficients that include these effects are presented and compared against curved girder finite element models. Results show horizontal curvature increases shear buckling capacity and ultimate shear strength over a range of girder horizontal curvatures, web slenderness ratios and panel aspect ratios. These enhanced capacities could be utilized to reduce the number of transverse stiffeners needed to resist construction and service load demands.

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