Steel plate girders shear strength prediction. A performance comparison of analytical models

 Web shear buckling of steel plate girders limits their load-carrying capacity in bending. Several analytical models have been suggested in the literature to estimate the shear capacity of plate girders. This paper presents a critical evaluation of several of these analytical models using the data of experimentally tested plate girders available in the literature. It was found that these analytical models make a conservative estimation of critical buckling strength for plate girders with larger slenderness and/or aspect ratios. Although the predicted ultimate shear strength varied across the different analytical models, no particular trend was identified to show that the aspect and/or slenderness ratios influenced the shear strength. A parametrically conducted analysis indicated that the threshold slenderness ratio (to cause buckling in the web panel) decreases with increasing yield strength and aspect ratio. The paper proposes simplified guidelines for the preliminary sizing of steel plate girders by avoiding shear buckling. It has been shown that the sizes of plate girders determined using the proposed guidelines satisfy design requirements for both flexure and shear.