Parametric Study on Built-up Plate Girder to Eurocode 3 with Various Beam Span and Steel Grade

This paper presents the parametric study on built-up plate girders with various steel grades and beam spans to investigate the economic aspect of built-up plate girders with truss girders. Commonly the plate girder is designed to carry heavy load over a 20 m span length and different span lengths of the girders will influence the design of plate girders and their self-weight based on the steel grades and span lengths. Therefore, this study is carried out to determine the most economical detail dimensions and the self-weight of the plate girder structure which is based on the constant uniformly distributed loading acting on the variations of span length and steel grades. Plate girders are I-shaped cross-sections with symmetrical flanges. However, the depth of the plate girder is fixed as 1/20 of the span length and allocated to the design requirements. Bending moment resistance, shear buckling resistance for the flanges and web and the torsional buckling and buckling capacity of the stiffeners are checked through Eurocode 3. To evaluate the economic aspect based on the girders’ weight, parametric studies were carried out and the results obtained were compared with the truss girder. After that, comparative studies of the self-weight of the plate girders and the truss girder are carried out to study the more economical girder structure in terms of steel weight.