New formulas revolutionize design of curved steel bridges for safer roads.
A new set of equations was developed to predict the strength and deflection of curved steel bridges based on straight bridge analysis. The researchers studied 54 different curved bridge models with varying curvature radius, span length, and number of girders. They found that the proposed formulas accurately estimate the maximum forces and deflections in the girders, outperforming current methods in some cases. These equations can be useful for designing curved steel bridges, but caution is advised when applying them to bridges with different characteristics.