THE ASSESSMENT OF STRESS RESULTANTS AND DISPLACEMENTS IN BRIDGE DECKS BY THE USE OF DISTRIBUTION COEFFICIENTS

This paper presents a simple but accurate method of determining stress resultants and displacements in simply supported bridge decks due to a variety of live loading specifications. The current work augments previous displacement techniques described by the authors as the D-Type method, and retains the essential procedure and simplicity. The semicontinuum method is explained in principle and then applied to a simple bridge deck consisting of a reinforced concrete slab on prestressed Y-beams. A table is presented showing the accuracy of the method compared with the more traditional grillage and finite element approaches which can be very time consuming and produce much superfluous data. A table of distribution coefficients is also presented and used to illustrate the method, and a computer program option is provided which requires very little input compared with finite element packages, and which produces a distribution profile across the width of a deck for both longitudinal bending moments and displacements at any given cross section. The method is shown to be simple and reliable and presents a challenge to bridge engineers to break out of the strait-jacket of conventional analysis techniques with confidence. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 882313.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Features: References;
  • Pagination: p. 769-78

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00729515
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
  • ISBN: 0-419-21210-8
  • Files: ITRD
  • Created Date: Dec 26 1996 12:00AM