ANALYSIS OF NON PRISMATIC BEAMS IN BRIDGE

Ramya A1

Prof Dr.Elavenil S2

M.Tech Structural Engineering

School of Mechanical and Building Sciences
VIT University Chennai Campus
Chennai-600127, Tamil Nadu, India
ramya.a2014@vit.ac.in

Structural Engineering Division

School of Mechanical and Building Sciences
VIT University Chennai Campus
Chennai-600127, Tamil Nadu, India
elavenil.s@vit.ac.in

Asst Prof Nafeez Ahmed L3

Asst Prof Claudia Jeya Pushpa.D 4

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Gojan School of Business and Technology
Edapalyam, Redhills, Chennai-600052
nafeez1588@gmail.com

Structural Engineering Division

School of Mechanical and Building Sciences
VIT University Chennai Campus, Chennai-600127
claudia.jeyapushpa@vit.ac.in

Abstract In India, most of the highly populated cities

were adapted to the mass rapid transport system to control
as well govern traffic congestion during peak hours. This
paper describes the design and analysis of non prismatic
beam placed in such a position under the deck slab is
innovative concept in Bridge Engineering and their
performance in the effect of seismic forces. The analysis
was done under the effect of seismic loading, moving load
of vehicle by using Finite element analysis software ANSYS
14.5. The deck slab has been modeled as reinforced
concrete structure and elastomeric rubber bearings are
placed above the pedestals to resist against from the action
of earthquake loads. The deck slab, girder has been
designed with aids of IRC: 6-2000, IRC: 21-2000.Every
three years once these bearing can be replaced with the
help of hydraulic jack. Typically used in the long span
bridges. Also this paper involves the design and analyses of
grade separator under the action of seismic performance.
By implementing non prismatic beam in the place of
conventional I girder so that volume of concrete and
reinforcement can be minimized in such way to control the
cost effective. Even its own self weight of the beam can be
reduced as compared to normal I girder beams. To enrich
the performance of non prismatic beam placed under the
deck slab. The objective of this paper to control the cost of
huge project and accomplished with material usage is
lesser.

control under supervision. To control the traffic congestion

bridges were built among the corridors. The bridge is part of
connecting vital routes of link around the point traffic
congestion.

Index TermsNon prismatic beam, Elastomeric bearing

Deck slab, grade separator, time history analysis (key words)

I. INTRODUCTION
To control the traffic volume on the roads cities like
metropolis the feasible approach to establish a mass transport
system as grade separator. To provide safe, comfort public
transport to the people under the sustainable conditions.
Earthquake is the natural disaster and may causes vulnerable
damages to bridge structures even though the bridges being
designed with proper design methodologies and good quality

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

[1] J J Orr, A P Darby, T J Ibell, M Evernde, P Lava and D

Debruyne in their work to study the behaviour of non prismatic
beam . Non-prismatic members are the beams in which the
depth of the beam varies depending upon the moment it has to
resist at a particular section. It is obvious that bending moment
due to Dead and live Loads at the centre of the beam is
maximum, so more depth has to be provided in order to resist
this Moment.
[2] Thomas Wilson, Hussam Mahmoud, and Suren Chen D
they presented paper on Seismic performance of skewed and
curved reinforced concrete bridges in mountainous. The larger
deformation results were obtained with respect to D/C ratios in
the column by incorporating both skew and curvature and also
results in damage to the substructure. This suggests that
consideration of design and analysis approach under the effects
of seismic loads.
[3] Ata Babazadeh, S.M., Rigoberto Burgue, and Pedro F. silva
this paper involves the Use of 3D Finite-Element models for
predicting intermediate damage limit states in RC Bridge
Columns. This paper has illustrated the potential of using 3D
FE simulations for evaluating IDLS in RC bridge columns.
The results are based on findings for flexure-dominated
columns with adequate transverse reinforcement to provide
ductility and the results are only applicable to columns with
aspect ratios of 6 or greater. The monotonic loading is used for
the finite element models; it doesnt ensure the prediction of
ultimate damage limit states that exhibit significant
dependency on displacement history.
III. SEISMIC DESIGN
The objective of seismic design is to satisfy the non
prismatic beam must be restrained under the effect of various
intensities of lateral load induced in it. The first criteria shall be

designed in such a way to resist earthquake force. Then

elastomeric bearing are provided to dissipate the energy from
then to ensure that minimum structural damage may excepted
rarely in the case of very high intensity of lateral force.
IV. CONCEPT OF IMPLEMENTING NON PRISMATIC
BEAM
To evaluate the performance of non prismatic beam is placed
under the deck slab. To control the cost of huge project and
accomplished with material usage is lesser. Typically used in
the long span bridges. Even its own self weight of the beam
can be reduced as compared to normal I girder beams. The
design was done by manual calculation as well excel format
with aid of IRC codes. By use of Excel format calculation
which helps to forecast the results obtained with manual
calculation for future scope of the work.
V. MERITS OF NON PRISMATIC BEAM

Fig 1 Modeling
calculated manually feed into analysis. The live load

The advantages of non prismatic beams can be implemented

due to the effective cost control in the bridge projects, light in
weight as compared to conventional I girder, Volume of
concrete can be minimized, drastically shear stress will be
reduced as much possible.
These beams are aesthetically more appealing than the
Prismatic beams due to their varying depth, which take the
shape of the curve. The curve is the optimised shape of the
beam and the further optimisation based on the shear force is
done by Bailliss [5].
VI. MODELING AND ANALYSIS
The Modeling has been done in the software Pro e 5.0 and an
analysis was performed in ANSYS14.5. Then the model has
been converted from .ptc format into .iges format then model
has to be imported in Ansys Workbench and analytical
investigation is to be carried out for this study.

TABLE I.

Fig 2 Meshing
distribution along longitudinal girder was calculated by using
courbons method.

PARAMETERS OF MODELS CONSIDERED IN

ANALYSIS

Description & values

200
20
Non prismatic girder
or of the span
depth is 477mm
M40
Fe500
8800

VIII. ILLUSTRATION OF MODELING AND ANALYSIS

A typical non prismatic beam and deck slab was designed

as per IRC class AA tracked loading. In this study, Non
prismatic beam integrated with the part of deck slab and shall
cast as monolithic. The design moving wheel loads are

MODELING

VII. METHODOLOGY

STEP 1
Meshing

STEP 2
Static
structura
l analysis

STEP 3
Modal
Analysis

STEP 4
Transient
Analysis

Get high
relevance

Dead &
Live
Load
cases

Natural
frequenc
y of the
structure

Total
deformation
Shear stress

RESULTS

Properties
Depth of deck slab (mm)
Span length (m)
Beam type
Depth at centre 650mm
Provide clearance of 500mm
for positioning the beam
Grade of concrete(N/mm2)
Grade of steel (N/mm2)
Width of RC deck slab(mm)

TABLE

2 INPUT DATA OF ACCELERATION VS. TIME HISTORY

Time
in (s)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Acceleration
in (mm/s2)
0
0
-988
765
-589
1200
-900
856
-560
780
780

Fig 3 Total deformation at 2nd mode

Fig 5 Total deformation at 4th mode

IX. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

When compared to conventional I girder, nonprismatic beam on bridges drastically reduces the self-weight
and the shear stress. Transformation from Prismatic to Nonprismatic beam improves the flexure member in many ways,
self-weight, volume is reduced and stresses are released.
Hence Non-Prismatic members are far more efficient than
Prismatic members. This typical beam can be implemented in
the case of bridge projects to control the cost effective.

Fig 6 Total deformation at 5th mode

Fig 7 Total deformation at 6th mode

Fig 4 Total deformation at 3rd mode

Fig 8 Total deformation at 7th mode

Fig 10 Equivalent stress

Fig 14 Moving load deformation at 0.33s

Fig 9 Total deformation

Fig 13 Moving load

Fig 11 Shear stress

Fig 15 Moving load deformation at 0.41s

Fig 17 Moving load deformation at 0.53s

Fig 16 Moving load deformation at 0.46s

Fig 12 Time history data

Fig 17
19 Moving load deformation at 0.82s
0.76s
REFERENCES

Fig 18 Moving load deformation at 0.71s

[1] J J Orr, A P Darby, T J Ibell, M Evernde, P Lava and D

Debruyne, The shear behaviour of non-prismatic reinforced
concrete beams determined using digital image correlation.
Concrete Structures using fabric formwork, The Structural
engineer,89 (8) pp. 20-26. ISSN 1466-5123.(2011)
[2] Thomas Wilson, Hussam Mahmoud, and Suren Chen D, Seismic
performance of skewed and curved reinforced concrete bridges
in mountainous.
[3] Ata Babazadeh, S.M., Rigoberto Burgue, and Pedro F. Silva, Use
of 3D Finite-Element models for predicting intermediate damage
limit states in RC Bridge Columns.
[4] Muhammad Umar Zulkefli, Elastic Response of Integral Bridge
under Malaysian Low Intensity Earthquake. IEEE Colloquium
on Humanities, Science & Engineering Research (CHUSER
2012), Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
[5] Bailiss, J., 2006 Fabric-formed concrete beams: Design and
analysis, MEng Thesis, Department of Architecture and Civil
Engineering, Bath, University of Bath.
[6] Garbett, J., Darby, A. P. and Ibell, T. J. , 2010. Optimised beam
design using innovative fabric-formed concrete, Advances in
structural engineering.13 (5). pp. 849-860. ISSN 1369-4332.
[7] Alemdar, Z. F., Matamoros, A. B., and Browning, J. (2013).
High resolution modeling of reinforced concrete bridge
columns under seismic loading. ACI Struct. J., 110(5), 745754.
[8] R.Shreedhar, Spurti Mamadapur, Analysis of T-beam Bridge
Using Finite Element Method. International Journal of
Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT) Volume 2, Issue
3, September 2012.
[9] Amit Saxena1, Dr. Savita Maru Comparative Study of the
Analysis and Design of T-Beam Girder and Box Girder
Superstructure. IJREAT International Journal of Research in
Engineering & Advanced Technology, Volume 1, Issue 2, AprilMay, 2013 ISSN: 2320 8791.
[10] Neeraj Kumar, Dr. S. Mandal ,The Effect of Varying Span on
Design of Short Span Reinforced Concrete T-Beam Bridge Deck.
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology
(IJERT) ISSN: 2278-0181.Vol. 4 Issue 02, February-2015
[11] Mahesh Tandon, Economical design of earthquake-resistant
bridges. ISET Journal of Earthquake Technology, Paper No. 453,
Vol. 42, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 13-20
[12] D Johnson Victor (2007), Essential of Bridge Engineering6th
edition

[13] IRC 6-2010, Standard Specifications and Code of Practice for

Road Bridges, Section II, loads and stresses, The Indian Roads
Congress, New Delhi, India, 2010.
[14] IRC: 21-2000, Standard Specifications and Code of Practice for
Road Bridges, Section III, Cement Concrete (Plain and

Reinforced), The Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi, India,

2000.
[15] IRC:SP: 54-2000 Project Preparation Manual for Bridge, The
Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi, India, 2000.