Additional Deflection in Prestressed Concrete Box Girder with Corrugated Steel Webs Induced by Shear Deformation Effect

In the last three decades, prestressed concrete box girder with corrugated steel webs (CSWs) has increasingly become one of competitive bridge superstructure types. It attracted more and more engineers all over the world, and the design theory associated with it was established and gained constant development in practice. Due to the shear deformation effect in CSWs, a non-negligible additional deflection often occurs under concentrated or uniformly distribued loads, as different from conventional box girders with concrete webs. To makte the additional deflection clear in essence, the paper presents a unified analytical expression and then performs an influencing parameter analysis. Results show that the depth-span ratio is the dominating parameter. If the additional deflection is to be limited to a small level and even negligible, the depth-span ratio needs to be designed to approximate to a very small value or a threshold value. However, there is still not a consistent conclusion in the threshold value in the current research, and the threshold values presented in the limited studies need to be further verified. Under these circumstances, the influence of the shear deformation effect in CSWs on the additional deflection has to be checked carefully and then considered adequately in construction control.