Steel and Concrete Elasto-Plastic Models at Bridges with Steel Beams Embedded in Concrete

For new railway bridges with short spans (L ≤ 35.00 m) superstructures with steel beams embedded in concrete are recommended or used, which can ensure the requirements of strength and stiffness in particular, regardless of velocity. They are built relatively easily compared to reinforced concrete structures or steel structures, they have high durability if designed, built and maintained correctly and don’t have high sensitivity to fatigue degradation in service. They are also used for road bridges when it is desired to achieve a reduced construction height.

In all the design prescriptions used so far for structures with steel beams embedded in concrete, the calculation is a simplified one, made on a single insulated longitudinal beam of the deck, if certain conditions related to the geometry of the structure are met (obliquity, curvature). Simplifications are also made regarding the state of deformation of the decks made in this constructive solution by introducing an effective moment of inertia in the displacement calculation, as an average of the inertia moments of the cross section considered to be cracked and respectively un-cracked.

The article aims to validate steel and concrete elasto-plastic models, based on an experiment from the technical literature, necessary for complex analyses of the percentage of concrete involved in the stiffness of the cross-sections, in case of bridges with steel beams embedded in concrete.