Bending, Shear and Patch Loading Interaction Behaviour of Slender Steel Sections

The new Hárosi Danube bridge on the M0 highway around Budapest has been designed and erected between 2010-2012. The superstructure of the bridge is a continuous steel box girder with 3 spans (3 x 108.5 m). The independent static check in the final stage and during the launching phases are made by the BME Department of Structural Engineering. The current paper focuses on the numerical modelling technique and on the specialities of the static check of this bridge structure during launching. An additional research program is also related to the static check of this bridge structure, which was made in cooperation with the University of Stuttgart and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. During launching nearly all cross-sections come at least once over a support where a concentrated reaction force, large bending moment and shear forces are introduced and hereby buckling problems may arise in the slender web panel. In the current version of EN1993-1-5 [1] there is no standard design method to take the interaction of these three effects into account. Therefore our research work focuses on the interaction behaviour of longitudinally unstiffened and stiffened steel girders under the combination of bending, shear and patch loading.