Flexural resistance and buckling design of steel plate girders with double-corrugated webs

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive numerical investigation of the flexural capacity and lateral-torsional buckling (LTB) behavior of steel plate girders with double-corrugated webs (PGDCWs) under uniform bending moment, combining an extended parametric finite element (FE) study with the development and calibration of practical design formulations. Building upon a previous numerical investigation confirming the significant LTB resistance advantage of PGDCWs over single-corrugated web girders (PGCWs) under uniform bending, the current work extends that study to a parametric database of 144 FE models developed using ABAQUS , covering a wide range of section geometries and corrugation configurations. The investigation addresses compact flanges, for which the full plastic moment capacity can be developed. An analytically derived elastic critical moment formula is also introduced and validated against FE results. Based on the numerical parametric study, a new closed-form expression for the flexural capacity of PGDCWs is proposed and calibrated, together with a design buckling curve formulation compatible with EN 1993-1-1. The proposed flexural capacity formulation predicts the FE results with an error within ±4%. In contrast, the proposed buckling curve provides a conservative prediction of the numerical LTB resistance. Comparison with existing design codes demonstrates the superior accuracy of the proposed approach, with the most influential geometric parameters identified as the web slenderness ratio λ w , the web spacing ratio λ x , and the corrugation geometry λ c . The proposed formulations offer improved accuracy over existing methods and provide clear guidance for the design of this emerging girder typology.