EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF BRIDGE LEDGE BEAMS CONSIDERING THE CONTRIBUTION OF INNER STIRRUPS TO SUPPORT EXTERNAL LOADS

Abstract

This research is executed to study the influence of the contribution of inner stirrups with the hanging steel reinforcement to support external loads. The parametric study included parameters that are not considered by the current design procedures presented in the 7th edition of the PCI Design Handbook (2017). The findings of this research will empower engineers to predict actual behaviour for the contribution of the inner stirrups with the hanging steel reinforcement, so engineers could effectively use less amount of reinforcement for the outer branch and seize the advantage of the inner branches which already placed in the beam. The current study mainly divided into two sections; validation of the developed finite element models with previous experimental results and showed a good agreement with them and conducting a parametric study to study a broad spectrum of parameters and to propose design guidelines. 6.2 CONCLUSIONS 1. The outcomes of this research showed that the inner stirrups can effectively be used as a hanger steel reinforcement to reduce the amount of outer vertical stirrups. 2. The study showed a considerable increase on the hanger load capacity of ledge beams where it recorded (+32% to 3%) increase in the hanger load capacity in comparison to the control beams. a. For Si/b = 0.12, increase the hanger load capacity by a range of (11.00% to 32.00%) with different configurations. b. For Si/b = 0.24, increase the hanger load capacity by a range of (11.84% to 22.42%) with different configurations.