Simulating the construction process of steel-concrete composite bridges

This paper presents a master-slave constraint method, which may substitute the conventional transformed-section method, to account for the changes in cross-sectional properties of composite members during construction and to investigate the time-dependent performance of steel-concrete composite bridges. The time-dependent effects caused by creep and shrinkage of concrete are considered by combining the age-adjusted effective modulus method and finite element analysis. An efficient computational tool which runs in AutoCAD environment is developed to simulate the construction process of steel-concrete composite bridges. The major highlight of the developed tool consists in a very convenient and user-friendly interface integrated in AutoCAD environment. The accuracy of the proposed method is verified by comparing its results with those provided by using the transformed-section method. Furthermore, the computational efficiency of the developed tool is demonstrated by applying it to a steel-concrete composite bridge.