Effect of Cross-section Bracing in Steel-concrete Composite Bridge Decks Using the Generalized Beam Theory

This paper explores the structural analysis of steel‐concrete bridge decks with explicit consideration of flexible cross‐section bracing, using a novel procedure based on the Generalized Beam Theory (GBT). The effect of the bracing is included in a GBT‐based bar finite element, which is used to analyze two numerical examples involving standard deck cross‐sections and bracing systems. It is shown that the proposed finite element leads to extremely accurate solutions when compared with those obtained with full shell finite element models, with a huge economy in terms of DOFs. Moreover, it is shown that the modal features of GBT provide a very valuable tool for the structural interpretation of the results.