Flexible Shear Connectors for Railway Composite Girder Bridges

In continuous girder bridges a large negative moment occurs in regions over the intermediate piers. In order to prevent cracks in the concrete slab, the authors have developed special connectors, which are flexible enough to transmit little shearing force, enduring many cycles of deformation. They have already been applied to actual railway composite girder bridges without troubles. It was analyzed how the length of zone provided with the flexible connectors influences the characteristics of structure.