ABSTRACT
An overpass is occasionally damaged by a truck running underneath. Typical collision damage in a steel girder bridge includes the deformation of a main girder, the buckling of a transverse stiffener and the removal of a transverse stiffener from the web. The influence of the damage on the safety of the bridge needs be judged. Yet it is not always an easy task, since the load-carrying capacity of a girder damaged by collision has not been studied much. The first author has been involved in the evaluation of a highway steel girder bridge damaged by collision. Based on the data obtained from that bridge, the load-carrying capacity of the deformed girder is studied numerically in the present study. To be specific, the deformation of the main girder due to collision is reproduced by the finite element analysis and the deformed steel girder is loaded to evaluate the load-carrying capacity. The result indicates that as far as the damage is confined to the deformation of the girder, the collision does not threaten the safety of the bridge even when the deformation is quite large.
