Ultimate Capacity Destructive Testing and Finite-Element Analysis of Steel I-Girder Bridges

Current bridge design and rating techniques are based at the component level and thus cannot predict the ultimate capacity of bridges, which is a function of system-level interactions. While advances in computer technology have made it possible to conduct accurate system-level analyses, which can be used to design more efficient bridges and produce more accurate ratings of existing structures, the knowledge base surrounding system-level bridge behavior is still too small for these methods to be widely considered reliable. Thus, to advance system-level design and rating, a 1/5-scale slab-on-steel girder bridge was tested to ultimate capacity and then analytically modeled. The test demonstrated the significant reserve capacity of the steel girders, and the response of the specimen was governed by the degradation of the reinforced-concrete deck. To accurately capture the response of the specimen in an analytical model, the degradation of the deck and other key features of the specimen were modeled by using a dynamic analysis algorithm in a commercially available finite-element analysis program ABAQUS.