Behavior of Skewed Beam and Slab Bridge Decks

A stiffness method for the analysis of monolithic beam and slab skew bridges is developed, the deck geometry being modeled with two-node beam and four-node skew plate finite elements. The T-beam action of the deck is effected by joining the centroidal surface of the beam and plate systems at the corresponding nodes by infinitely stiff connections. This form of representation implies that, at a beam-plate connection, the displacements of the two elements may be related to each other so that at such a connection there exists only one independent node. Thus, the number of equations necessary for an analysis is only of the same order as that required for a flat grillage solution. However, the necessity of prior calculation of section properties, as is required in the grillage approach, is eliminated.