Stability Of Stiffened Compression Plates Of Steel Bridge And Stiffeners Design Method

Steel bridges have been widely used in recent years in China. The stability and stififeners design method of stiffened plates, as members of box girders, arch ribs and towers etc. are very important in design of steel bridges. There are, however, few articles about the stiffeners design method of stiffened thin-walled plates in the design specification of highway bridges in China.The calculation method and formulas of buckling modes and buckling coefficients of stiffened plates under uniform compression were introduced briefly, and the stiffeners design methods in some foreign specifications, specially the required stiffness of stiffeners, were discussed.The calculation methods of ultimate strength in BS5400, AASHTO, Japanese Specification for Highway Bridge and the column approach methods proposed by some scholars were summarized and compared, and the appropriateness of mentioned methods for design of stiffened plate members of steel bridges was discussed.The design methods of stiffened plate with small flexural stiffeners were investigated and were compared with the FEM analysis results. According to the comparisons, some appropriate calculation methods of the stiffened plates for steel bridges were proposed.