Monitoring Steel Girder Stability for Safer Bridge Erection
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 23, Issue 6
Abstract
The collapse of the State Route 69 Bridge over the Tennessee River near Clifton, Tennessee, is an example of how instability and lateral torsional buckling failure of a single steel bridge girder during erection might cause collapse of the whole steel superstructure. Close attention should be given to the stability of steel plate girders during erection when the lateral support provided to the compression flange might temporarily not be present. Rules of thumb in use today have been adopted by contractors/subcontractors to check the stability of cantilever or simply supported girders under erection using the ratio, where is the unbraced length and b is the compression flange width. For each girder section, a maximum ratio exists beyond which lateral torsional buckling failure would occur under girder self-weight. Parametric studies were conducted following the latest AASHTO LRFD code in order to indentify the maximum ratio for various girder sections and check the rules of thumb, as well as determine the dominating section parameters on girder stability under erection. Advanced nonlinear finite-element analyses were also conducted on a girder section for both the cantilever and the simply supported case in order to further understand the behavior of girder instability due to lateral torsional buckling under the self-weight, as well as to develop a trial-and-error methodology for identifying the maximum ratio using computer analysis. At the same time, the effect of lateral bracing location on the cantilever free end has been investigated, and it turned out that bracing the top tension flange would be more effective to prevent lateral torsional buckling than bracing the bottom compression flange.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
AASHTO. (2007). LRFD bridge design specifications, 4th Ed., Washington, D.C.
ABAQUS. (2008). ABAQUS/standard user’s manuals, Hibbitt, Karlsson, and Sorenson, Inc., Pawtucket, R.I.
American Bridge Division. (1983). Handbook for construction engineers, United States Steel Corporation, Pittsburgh.
Dowswell, B. (2004). “Lateral-torsional buckling of wide flange cantilever beams.” Eng. J., 41(3), 135–147.
Gere, J. M. (2006). Mechanics of materials, 6th Ed., Brooks Cole, Canada.
Hastings, J. S., Zhao, Q., and Burdette, E. (2009) “Girder stability during steel bridge erection.” J. Bridge Eng. (submitted).
Kitipornchai, S., Dux, P. F., and Richter, N. J. (1983). “Buckling and bracing of cantilevers.” Report No. CE42, Dept. of Civil Engineering Research, Univ. of Queensland, Australia.
Knoxville News Sentinel. (1995). “One worker missing and two survive after bridge under construction collapses.” ⟨http://www.nscc.edu/seatec/pages_resources/case_studies_new/Bridge/Bridge-Student/Pages-Content/news-flash.htm⟩ (March 17, 2009).
McGormley, J. C., Hill, H. J., and Koob, M. J. (2006). “Collapse of the State Route 69 Bridge over the Tennessee River.” Proc., Structures and Extreme Events. IABSE Symp., Lisbon, Portugal, 326–327.
Richards, T. H., and Stanley, P. (1979). Stability problems in engineering structures and components, Applied Science Publishers, London, 89–99.
White, D. W., and Jung, S. (2007). “Effect of web distortion on the buckling strength of non-composite discretely-braced steel I-section members.” Eng. Struct., 29(8), 1872–1888.
Wojnowski, A. D., Domel, W. A., and Wilkinson, A. J. (2002). “Analysis of a hybrid plate girder bridge during erection collapse of Tennessee Highway 69 bridge.” Prog. Struct. Eng. Mater., 4(1), 87–95.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 8, 2008
Accepted: Apr 13, 2009
Published online: Apr 24, 2009
Published in print: Dec 2009
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.