Analysis of corrugated steel web beam bridges using spatial grid modelling

Up to now, Japan has more than 200 corrugated steel web composite beam bridges which are under construction and have been constructed, and China has more than 30 corrugated steel web composite beam bridges. The bridge type includes the simply supported beam, continuous beam, continuous rigid frame and cable stayed bridge etc. The section form has developed to the single box and multi-cell box girder from the original single box and single chamber. From the stress performance and cost saving, the span range of 50~150 m is the most competitive. At present, the design mostly adopts the computational analytical method combining the spatial bar system model, plane beam grillage model and solid model. However, the spatial bar system model is short of the refinement analysis on the space effect, such as the shear lag effect, effective distribution width problem, and eccentric load factor problem etc. Due to the similarity of the plane beam grillage method in the equivalence principle, it cannot accurately reflect the shearing stress distribution and local stress of the top and bottom plates of the box type composite beam. The solid model is very difficult to combine with the overall calculation. Moreover, the spatial grid model can achieve the refinement analysis, with the integrity of the analysis and the comprehensiveness of the stress checking calculation, and can make up the deficiency of the analytical method currently. Through the example verification of the solid model and spatial grid model, it can be seen that the calculation results for the stress and the displacement of two models are almost consistent, indicating the applicability and precision of the spatial grid model.