Controlling deflection of long steel I-shaped girder bridge using two V-shaped pre-tensioning cables

Despite appropriate design of girder under bending and shear, the deflection of long steel girders usually exceeds the allowable range, and therefore the structural designers encounter challenges in this regard. Considering significant features of the cables, namely, low weight, small cross section, and high tensile strength, they are used in this research so as to control the deflection of long girder bridges, rather than increasing their heights. In this study, theoretical relations are developed to calculate the increase in pre-tensioning force of V-shaped steel cables under external loading as well as the deflection of steel girder bridges with V-shaped cables and different support conditions. To verify the theoretical relations, the steel girder bridge is modeled in the finite element ABAQUS software with different support conditions without cable and with V-shaped cables. The obtained results show that the theoretical relations can appropriately predict the deflection of girder bridge with V-shaped cables and different support conditions. In this study, the effects of the distance from support on the deflection of mid span are studied in both simply supported and fixed supported girder bridge so as to obtain the appropriate distance from support causing the minimum deflection.