Web shear buckling of steel-concrete composite girders – advanced numerical analysis

•The contribution of the concrete slab on the shear strength of steel-concrete composite girders is considerable for tested girder configurations.•The increase in web slenderness and aspect ratio diminishes the shear strength of steel-concrete composite plate girders.•Local web imperfections have little to no influence on the shear strength of steel-concrete composite plate girders for tested girder configurations.•The influence of shear connection in tested girders is minimal, with only 5 % drop in the shear strength.•The Darehshouri analytical has a limited range of applicability for different plate girder configurations and loading scenarios. Load-bearing capacity of plate girders, often used in design of bridges and high-rise buildings, is limited by the shear capacity of connected slender plate elements subjected to shear buckling. To quantify this, experimental investigations on five large-scale steel and steel-concrete composite plate girders loaded solely in shear, with a minimal influence of bending moments, have been conducted and evaluated. In this paper, the phenomenon of web shear buckling is investigated within the numerical analysis using the ABAQUS Software. An advanced numerical model has been developed and results validated against existing experimental findings. One of the focal points of this study represents the methodology of developing such a comprehensive numerical model, implementation of suitable analysis procedures, material models, boundary conditions, finite elements and interactions, in order to correctly replicate the observed response in the tests. In addition, case studies tackling the influence of web slenderness, aspect ratio, initial imperfections, shear connection and concrete classes on the structural-mechanical behavior of steel-concrete composite girders in shear as well as the applicability and suitability of the existing analytical model are also presented and analyzed.