• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.13 no.4 s.56
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• pp.180-187
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• 2009

The objective of this research is to verify the code-specified girder distribution factors (GDF) for continuous steel girder bridges by field testing. Previous analytical study revealed that current GDF's specified in AASHTO Standard and AASHTO LRFD, developed for the simple span bridges are conservative even for the continuous bridges. In this study, field tests were performed for three continuous steel girder bridges to validate the GDF's specified in the AASHTO codes. The results show that the code values are conservative when compared with field tests, and in some cases, too conservative. Also, strains measured from the field test are, in most cases, smaller than those expected from the analytical results. However, when the GDF's from measured strains are compared with GDF's from analysis, it is found that the analysis results are not conservative, and in some instance, the analytical results underestimate the actual GDF's, which can lead to a groundless notion of safety. In one case, test results showed that the code GDF's specified in AASHTO LRFD is too permissive. As a result, it is found that GDF's specified in AASHTO LRFD should be used with careful reservation.