Parametric study on reinforced concrete T-beam girder bridges

Abstract

The development of any country is indicated by its infrastructure. Highways are a significant part of the infrastructure in India. Usually, most of the bridges on highways are T-beam girder bridges. This paper deals with the investigation of a T-beam girder bridge for dead load and Indian Road Congress (IRC) live loads. In this study, linear finite element analysis of a skew bridge with T-beam girders has been carried out using finite element software CSiBridge22 as per IRC provision. The skew angle, span, span-depth ratio, loading conditions, and girder spacing are all factors that influence the behaviour of a skew bridge. Two parameters i.e., span length and skew angle are used in the analysis, and the effect of these parameters on the bending moment, shear force, torsional moment, and deflection is studied. For validation, manually calculated results following the analytical method are compared with those obtained from a finite element model. A convergence study is performed to get the optimum mesh size. The findings of the study demonstrate that skew angle has a more significant effect on the bridge than other characteristics. The bending moment (BM) at the mid-span of the bridge and deflection decrease as the skew angle increases, whereas the shear force (SF) and torsional moment (TM) increase with the increase in skew angle.