Economic Design of Steel Concrete Composite Bridges

Abstract

A new class of high strength steel with excellent toughness, ductility, and good weldability is emerging world-wide, named as High Performance Steel (HPS). HPS can be designed as having an optimized balance of these properties to give maximum performance in bridge structures while remaining cost-effective.  A study is performed to compare the cost differences between bridge designs using conventional mild steel Fe 410 and high tensile steel Fe 590. Two cases of span supported and un-supported during construction are considered for comparison. Maximum flexural stresses, maximum deflection, weight and cost are compared for 40m span steel-concrete composite bridge for both the unsupported and supported conditions of the bridge span during construction.  HPS steel is found to be most beneficial and economical in bridge design as compare to MS. However, the maximum deflection is found to increase more than two times the permissible deflection of L/600 for total dead and live load, for HPS girder in comparison to the mild steel girder case.