Nontraditional Shear Failures in Bulb-T Prestressed Concrete Bridge Girders

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Abstract
An experimental study was conducted in which five identical, full-scale bulb-T bridge girders were constructed and tested to shear failure. Although the shear span was kept the same for all of the tests (a = 3d), the distance from the end of the specimen to the center of the support bearing (overhang length) was varied. Varying the overhang length controlled whether or not the critical section subject to shear fell within the transfer length, which affected whether the specimen failure was caused by a traditional shear mechanism (web crushing, flexure-shear, etc.) or a nontraditional shear mechanism (e.g., horizontal shear or shear failure induced by anchorage zone distress). The shear failure values were compared with each other to investigate whether nontraditional shear mechanisms result in a lower capacity than traditional mechanisms. These values were also compared with nominal design capacities related to each different failure mechanism.

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