At the IABSE 2007 Symposium in Weimar, Germany, a comparative design project for a highway girder bridge by benchmark was proposed (Toma and Duan 2007). A simple type of bridge, that is, a simply supported steel composite girder bridge, was adopted for the benchmark in order to make the comparative study easier. Resultantly, 10 benchmark designs from di„erent countries were collected for the project. A comparison of these 10 bridges, designed basically under the same criteria for the proposed benchmark bridge, their characteristics, and thoughts on the steel composite girder designs of the world will be presented in this chapter, from which a rational bridge design can be derived. †e design standards in those countries are also compared. †e countries (and the organizations) of the 10 participating engineers are: United States of America (government), Belgium (university), China (university), Czech Republic (university), Egypt (university), Ireland or United Kingdom ( consultant), Italy (consultant), Japan (university), Korea (university), and Russia ( government). Professor of university is the occupation most of the participants, and the others are engineers in

27.1 Introduction ................................................................................... 1209 27.2 Design Criteria for the Benchmark Bridge .................................1210 27.3 Live Loads Used in Benchmark Designs .....................................1211