Experimental and numerical evaluation of bearing capacity of steel plate girder affected by end panel corrosion

The present study deals with the effect of uniform and non-uniform local corrosion damages at the bearing stiffener and nearby web on the bearing capacity of plate girder. Five plate girder ends simulated with different uniform and non-uniform types of corrosion damage, at the base of the bearing stiffener are used in the experimental program. The experimental results are modeled and verified on a Finite Element (FE) software ABAQUS, considering shell-solid coupling elements formulation. The study is further extended to various damage cases i.e., stiffener damage, stiffer plus web damages etc. considering different damage heights and residual thicknesses. The study concludes that minimum thickness within any damage height may be used to simulate the corrosion damage in a FE analysis. At the end, some empirical relationships are also proposed to estimate the bearing strength of the plate girder affected by the local corrosion damage at plate girder end.