ABSTRACT
Tapered steel plate girders offer greater structural benefits than prismatic members. Their advantages include greater strength and slenderness, as well as a reduction in steel consumption. Often, they are used in long-span bridges and portal frames. In order to maintain slender webs and to improve the structural behaviour of steel plate girders against instability effects, longitudinal stiffeners are often required. In this way the problem of local or shear buckling of the panel can be simplified to the phenomenon of local or shear buckling in each sub-panel, which is usually more favourable.
