BEHAVIOR OF HORIZONTALLY CURVED COMPOSITE BRIDGE DECKS UNDER IRAQI STANDARD BRIDGE LIVE LOADS

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of curvature and the girderspacing on the flexural behavior of horizontally curved in plane compositeconcrete-steel I-girder bridges under Iraqi live loads, using a Finite Elementmodel by ANSYS Workbench 14.5 commercial software. Many parametriccases study of various degrees of curvature [(L/R) = 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5,0.6 radians], girder spacing (1.5, 1.75, 2.0, 2.25 m) and Iraqi live load caseswere adopted in this research. The numerical analysis results generallyshows that the deflection, mid-span bottom flange longitudinal strain ofgirders increases when the bridge curvature increased under all selectedIraqi live load cases, and there is little effect of the girder spacing on themid-span deflection under all the selected cases of Iraqi standard live loads.

Keywords:

Finite Element , Curved Bridges , Composite Section , Iraqi Bridges Live loads , Girder Distribution Factor