Experimental study on composite plate girders with web opening

The paper is concerned with an experimental investigation on simply supported steel–concrete composite plate girders containing web openings. Ten composite plate girders were tested to failure in order to study their ultimate strength behaviour. Effect of web openings on the ultimate load behaviour of composite plate girders is of primary concern in this study. Test results show that the ultimate shear strength drops marginally in girders with smaller openings but the drop is significant in girders with larger openings, larger than 0·3d, with d being the web depth. The test specimens were also analysed using an analytical method and a finite-element modelling and the predicted results compared with the corresponding experimental values. The comparison shows good agreement, thus confirming the accuracy of the analytical method and finite-element modelling.