Comparative Study of the Proportions and Efficiency of Steel Arch Bridges

Abstract

The geometric information of 20 steel arch bridges was collected and used to investigate the correlation between proportions and behaviour. The sample bridges are deck arches, half-through arches, and suspended arches from existing provincial steel arch bridges in Ontario, Canada and other steel arch bridges familiar to the authors. The empirical trends of flatness (span-to-rise ratio), arch depth and girder depth, bending stiffness, slenderness, and shallowness were computed and plotted versus span length. These trends can be used for validating steel arch bridge designs for evaluating feasibility, initial proportioning of a steel arch bridge, or for assessing the efficiency of a proposed bridge through the effective stiffness depth and system slenderness. This study was inspired by research on concrete arch bridges [1].