Steel-concrete composite plate girders subject to shear loading

The paper is concerned with an experimental investigation on simply supported steel-concrete composite plate girders subject to shear loading. Four composite and two bare steel plate girders were tested to failure in order to study their ultimate strength behavior. The effect of composite action with the concrete slab on tension field action in the web panels is the main focus of the study. Extensive strain measurements were made on the web panels in order to measure the extent of tension field action. It is observed from the tests that the ultimate shear capacity of composite plate girders increases significantly compared to bare steel girders. The test specimens were analyzed using finite element modeling and the predicted results compared with the corresponding experimental values. The comparison shows good agreement thus confirming the accuracy of the modeling.