Plate girder design is required for many types of structure, including footbridges, steel rail/road bridges, and composite bridges in the temporary condition (supporting the weight of wet concrete during casting of the deck).
This cheat sheet aims to summarise all of the information you would need to carry out bending and shear checks on a typical plate girder.
It is assumed that the structure is a bridge, constructed in S355 steel.
It covers:
- Sizing of webs and flanges to keep class 3
- Yield strengths for different plate thicknesses
- Section properties for symmetrical sections
- Bending capacity
- Shear capacity and Shear Buckling (and limits on transverse stiffener spacing to prevent shear buckling)
- Shear flow / longitudinal shear stress
- Calculation of the force in a flange
Calculation of a buckling capacity is not included, as it depends on the level of restraint to the compression flange. Generally you can simplify the buckling calculation by treating the flange as a column between restraints (see the cheat sheet for flexural buckling).
PDF Cheat Sheet
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