Galvanizing-Induced Distortion in Steel Plate Girders. I: Effects of Girder Geometry

AbstractThis study investigates the distortion behavior of steel plate girders under the cumulative influence of welding and hot-dip galvanizing processes and is presented in two papers. This paper presents the results of a parametric study on the effects of girder geometry (length, depth, flange and web thickness, and stiffener placement) on distortions during hot-dip galvanizing. Nonlinear simulations were carried out using the commercial software Abaqus. It was found that girder length did not strongly affect girder distortion trends, but changes in girder depth and flange-to-web-thickness ratio did. Including stiffeners was found to offer some benefit to controlling distortion during galvanizing; however, the results also indicated that more stiffeners were not necessarily better. The results supported industry recommendations. The results of this study provide guidance to engineers, galvanizers, and fabricators to minimize steel plate girder distortion so that they can more confidently use hot-dip galvanizing to protect their bridges, and it presents a novel modeling framework that will enable significant future work in this field of study.