Effect of Curve Angle on Single Cell Box-Girder Bridge

The behaviour of curved box-girder bridge is quite different from the straight one as it is experienced by the additional torsional moments. The analysis and design of such box-girder bridges are quite complicated when the curve angle is varied. The effect of curve angle on the forces and deflection in the girders, inner and outer, of a simply supported single cell reinforced concrete curved box-girder bridge is investigated in this study. A Finite element based software, CSiBridge v.20, was used for the analysis. A convergence study was performed on the proposed model to select the optimum mesh size and the results obtained are validated with the published literature. The variation of absolute values of forces and deflection along both the girders, under dead load (DL) and IRC (Indian Road Congress) live load (LL), is observed and the equations are proposed for their prediction in terms of non-dimensional parameters, using the statistical approach. The present results may be helpful to the designers in the analysis and design of curved single cell reinforced concrete box-girder bridges.