Experimental Investigation of Shear Behavior of Cantilevered Non- Prismatic Box Girder with Corrugated Steel Webs

The non-prismatic box girder with corrugated steel webs is an alternative for long-span girder bridge. However, the shear stress analysis methods for uniform box girder are usually adopted for non-prismatic box girder. More rational approaches for shear stress distribution and shear buckling evaluation regarding to non-prismatic box girder needs to be experimentally investigated.

In this study, a balanced cantilever loading test on a non-prismatic box girder with corrugated steel web was conducted. The experimental results show that, under vertical loading near the cantilever tip, the shear stress has a uniform distribution along beam depth with a slightly larger shear stress at the middle. In addition, this paper presents the shear stress formula for non- prismatic box girder with CSW in the elastic phase, which agrees well with the experimental data. Based on other researchers’ investigation on the shear buckling, this paper discussed the accuracy of the inelastic buckling strength prediction method. From the results of this study, the proposed shear stress evaluation method can provide good predictions for the shear strength of the corrugated steel webs(CSW).