Long-Term Behavior of Prestressed Concrete Bridges with Corrugated Steel Webs

Abstract

Although prestressed concrete (PC) bridges with corrugated steel webs have become a promising form of bridges, their long-term behavior is not well understood. A study of their long-term behavior is reported. A numerical model to account for the creep and shrinkage of concrete and tendon relaxation is formulated and verified by test. As the assumption that plane sections remain plane, commonly adopted in Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories, is not valid, an extended sandwich beam theory is employed, considering the presence of diaphragms and external tendons. The long-term behavior of a typical bridge of this type is studied and compared with that of conventional PC bridges with flat steel webs and concrete webs. The effects of diaphragm and interaction between web shear deformation and local flange bending of the bridge are found to relieve with time. Moreover, the long-term deflection of this type of bridges is larger than that of their counterparts.