Neural networks for prediction of deflection in composite bridges

Neural networks have been developed for prediction of deflections, at service load, in steel-concrete composite bridges incorporating flexibility of shear connectors, shear lag effect and cracking in concrete slabs. Three neural networks have been presented to cover simply supported bridges, two span continuous bridges and three span continuous bridges. The use of the neural networks requires a computational effort almost equal to that required for the simple beam analysis (neglecting flexibility of shear connectors, shear lag effect and cracking of concrete). The training and testing data for neural networks are generated using finite element software ABAQUS. The neural networks have been validated for number of bridges and the errors are found to be small. Closed form solutions are also proposed based on the developed neural networks. The networks/ closed form solutions can be used for rapid prediction of deflection for everyday design.

► Neural networks developed for prediction of deflection of composite bridges.
► Sensitivity analysis carried out for identifying significant input parameters.
► Networks validated for example bridges and errors found small.
► Closed form expression proposed for prediction of deflection.