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Abstract

Horizontally curved concrete bridges are widely used in urban viaducts and overpasses all over the world. A box cross-section is often used in curved concrete girders because of its high resistance to both bending and torsion. This study focuses on the development of a new finite element analysis (FEA) methodology incorporating a novel formulation for curved box sections using orthotropic constitutive models for reinforced concrete, along with a layered shell theory approach. In the new approach, the box section is treated as a frame consisting of curved shell elements modeling webs and flanges and curved beam elements in the web-flange junctions. The use of shell and beam elements in the formulation significantly reduces the number of elements needed to model the box-section girder while maintaining the accuracy of the model. A degenerate superparametric shell element with reduced integration is used to avoid shear-locking, membrane-locking, and zero-energy problems. Prestrain effects are considered in the formulation to account for prestressing forces. The simulation results are compared to the available experimental results on four straight and curved, reinforced and prestressed, concrete box-section girders, with good agreement in terms of the deflections, twist angles, and strains in the prestressed reinforcement. Some critical issues in the analysis of concrete box girders, such as postpeak-strength behaviors, distortion of box section, are also discussed.