Flexural Vibration of Prestressed Concrete Bridges with Corrugated Steel Webs

Prestressed concrete bridges with corrugated steel webs have emerged as a new form of steel-concrete composite bridges with remarkable advantages compared with the traditional ones. However, the assumption that plane sections remain plane may no longer be valid for such bridges due to the different behavior of the constituents. The sandwich beam theory is extended to predict the flexural vibration behavior of this type of bridges considering the presence of diaphragms, external prestressing tendons and interaction between the web shear deformation and flange local bending. To this end, a C-1 beam finite element is formulated. The proposed theory and finite element model are verified both numerically and experimentally. A comparison between the analyses based on the sandwich beam model and on the classical Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko models reveals the following findings. First of all, the extended sandwich beam model is applicable to the flexural vibration analysis of the bridges considered. By letting alpha denote the square root of the ratio of equivalent shear rigidity to the flange local flexural rigidity, and L the span length, the combined parameter alpha L appears to be more suitable for considering the diaphragm effect and the interaction between the shear deformation and flange local bending. The diaphragms have significant effect on the flexural natural frequencies and mode shapes only when the alpha L value of the bridge falls below a certain limit. For a bridge with an alpha L value over a certain limit, the flexural natural frequencies and mode shapes obtained from the sandwich beam model and the classical Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko models tend to be the same. In such cases, either of the classical beam theories may be used.