Influence of Skew Angle for 40m Span Composite Girder Highway

Bridges
Maganti Janardhana1 and Naresh Goli2
1

Associate Professor, JNTUH College of Engineering, Hyderabad, India

Bridge Engineer, Halcrow Consultanting India Pvt Ltd., Hyderabad, India

ABSTRACT
In highway bridges reinforced concrete slab-on-steel girder bridges (composite bridges) remains
one of the most common uses. If possible bridges are constructed such that their span direction
is perpendicular to the bridge abutments. Highly skewed bridges can be the result of the various
design constraints. The proper design of all new bridges and evaluation of existing ones requires
accurate prediction of their behaviour. This paper gives the idea of girder forces for skews upto
45o.
Keywords: Composite bridge, skew
STRUCTURE IDEALISATION
For the analysis a 40m span bridge is considered. The bridge has been modelled with finite elements
and the boundaries modelled with elastic links with 3 directional stiffnesses. The shell elements are
used to represent the slab and beam elements for the steel girders. The cross girders has been
introduced at regular intervals of 4.75m. Total 6 bridge models are created, fig.1 shows the 45 o skew
bridge model.

Fig.1 Skew bridge with 45 degrees skew.

LOADING ON BRIDGE
The bridge is tested with both static and live loads. For the live loads 2 traffic lanes has been
used as per IRC-06 and vehicles used are class-A and 70RW. The impact factor is considered as
per code. Apart from the live loads seismic loads for zone-III is considered.
ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The bridge is analysed with computer software and results considered are reactions at the
bearing level, girder moments, torsion,deflection and stresses in slab. The fig.2 represents

Fig.2 Bearing reactions and Deflection diagram of

girders.

The bearing reactions and girder deflection profile. The bearing reactions shows that higher the
loading values at the obtuse angle corners and the deflection profile indicates maximum
deflection at the skew free location because of more mass concentration.
CONCLUSION
The study on skew composite bridges says that the torsional effect on the girders due to the skew
is very nominal and deflections of girders are not effecting with the skew but only the position of
the maximum deflection is changes with skew angle. And one should take care of bearing
reactions at the acute angles due to uplift.
References:
1. Gupta, Y. P. and Kumar, A. (1983), Structural Behavior of Interconnected Skew Slab-Girder
Bridges
2. Journal of the Institution of Engineers (India), Civil Engineering Division, v64, pp. 119-124.