Simplified analysis of flange transverse bending of corrugated web I-girders under in-plane moment and shear

This paper presents a simplified analysis method for flange transverse bending of corrugated web I-girders under in-plane moment and shear in the elastic range of behavior. Previous research has shown that a corrugated web I-girder under in-plane moment and shear will deflect in-plane and twist out-of-plane simultaneously. The out-of-plane twisting behavior can be analyzed as a flange transverse bending problem. Closed form solutions for this flange transverse bending problem for sinusoidal web profiles and solutions for web profiles with piecewise linear folds using the so-called fictitious load method have been produced and published previously. In this paper, the relationships among solutions for various web profiles are investigated. By using the principle of virtual work with virtual displacements in conjunction with the fictitious load method, it is shown that the variation of flange transverse bending moments in a corrugated web I-girder is directly related to an area function that depends exclusively on the geometry of the web profile. To exploit this result, a simplified method for analyzing flange transverse bending of corrugated web I-girders, referred to as the C-factor method, is introduced, and its advantages are discussed. In addition, the paper outlines a numerical solution procedure for flange transverse bending in corrugated web I-girders. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.