A study of continuous stem girder systems

A new beam system comprising two cantilever stems and an interspan composite beam hasbeen developed and its design philosophy is described in this paper. The system provides the equivalentof a semi-continuous beam without the requirement to calculate the moment rotation capacity of thebeam-to-column connection. The economy of braced frames using the system has been investigated andcompared with simple, continuous or semi-rigid systems. It is shown that the costs of the proposed systemare similar to the semi-rigid system and cheaper than both the simply supported and rigid beam systems.Two tests have been carried out on 6 meter span beams, which also incorporated an asymmetric flangesteel section. The behaviour of the system is presented and the test results are compared with thoseobtained from the theory.