Behavior of optimized prestressed concrete composite box-girders with corrugated steel webs

The traditional prestressed concrete composite box-girders with corrugated steel webs have several drawbacks such as large deflection and potential local buckling. In this study, two methods were investigated to optimize and improve the prestressed concrete composite box-girders with corrugated steel webs. The first method was to replace the concrete bottom slab with a steel plate and the second method was to support the concrete bottom slab on the steel flanges. The behavior of the prestressed concrete composite box-girders with corrugated steel webs with either method was studied by experiments on three specimens. The test results showed that behavior of the optimized and upgraded prestressed concrete composite box-girders with corrugated steel webs, including ultimate bearing capacity, flexural stiffness, and crack resistance, is greatly improved. In addition, the influence of different shear connectors, including perfobond leisten (PBL) and stud shear connectors, on the behavior of prestressed concrete composite box-girders with corrugated steel webs was studied. The results showed that PBL shear connectors can greatly improve the ultimate bearing capacity, flexural stiffness and crack resistance property of the prestressed concrete composite box-girders with corrugated steel webs. However, for the efficiency of prestressing introduced into the girder, the PBL shear connectors do not perform as well as the stud shear connectors.