Theoretical and experimental study on shear lag effect of partially cable-stayed bridge

In order to resolve the traffic congestion problem, many cable-stayed bridges are designed with a large width to span ratio. This results in significant shear lag effect to cause nonuniform stress distribution along the flanges of the beam of bridge. This paper reports study on the shear lag effect of the Lanzhou Xiaoxihu Yellow River Bridge. A 3D finite element model of the bridge was developed and finite element analysis (FEA) was done to obtain the theoretical results. To evaluate the theoretical results, a scaled model was made to conduct static test in laboratory. The experiment results accorded with the results obtained by FEA. It is proved that FEA is an effective method to predict shear lag effect of bridges of this type.