Determination of minimum depth of prestressed concrete I-Girder bridge for different design truck

The depth of superstructure is the summation of the height of girders and the thickness of the deck floor. In this study, it is aim to determine the maximum span length of girders and minimum depth of the superstructure of prestressed concrete I-girder bridge. For this purpose the superstructure of the bridge with the width of 10m and the thickness of the deck floor of 0.175m, which the girders length was changed by two meter increments between 15m and 35m, was taken into account. Twelve different girders with heights of 60, 75, 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, 160, 170 and 180 cm, which are frequently used in Turkey, were chosen as girder type. The analyses of the superstructure of prestressed concrete I girder bridge was conducted with I-CAD software. In the analyses AASHTO LRFD (2012) conditions were taken into account a great extent. The dead loads of the structural and non-structural elements forming the bridge superstructure, prestressing force, standard truck load, equivalent lane load and pedestrian load were taken into consideration. HL93, design truck of AASHTO and also H30S24 design truck of Turkish Code were selected as vehicular live load. The allowable concrete stress limit, the number of prestressed strands, the number of debonded strands and the deflection parameters obtained from analyses were compared with the limit values found in AASHTO LRFD (2012) to determine the suitability of the girders. At the end of the study maximum span length of girders and equation using for calculation for minimum depth of the superstructure of prestressed concrete I-girder bridge were proposed.