Postbuckling and ultimate state of stresses in steel plate girders

In [1], nonlinear large deflection finite element analysis was implemented to depict the characteristics of the shear failure mechanism of steel plate girders. That paper aimed at clarifying how–when–why and where plastic hinges form in flanges. The present paper extends those results to the state of stresses in web plates. It is shown that although the principal compressive stresses in the center of the web plates remain constant after an elastic buckling, they do increase considerably in other regions. In addition, the angles at which tension fields form; and the ultimate strength of plate girders is discussed and compared to those obtained by different theoretical and experimental hypotheses.