Slender Steel Sections – A Unified Approach for Ultimate Limit Checks

The paper presents an approach for performing ultimate limit design code checks for composite bridges with slender steel girders. Both, AASHTO and Eurocode requirements are met in this unified solution. The solution follows to a great extent directly the requirements of the codes, but is formulated in a general way for allowing for treating in principle arbitrary steel and composite sections which are not directly covered by the codes. Where the different codes have prescriptions which do not fit into the applied general concept, these prescriptions are transformed into equivalent proceedings matching the overall concept requirements. A typical slender bridge structure is finally used for presenting the procedure and comparing the results of AASHTO and Eurocode design.