Abstract
Recently, to minimize thermal cracks that occur due to excessive temperature differences, several slits have been provided as a crack-prevention measure in the concrete guard walls of bridges. However, this practice may affect the amount of stress in steel girders due to insufficient stiffness of these bridges. This paper presents an investigation of the effect of crack-prevention slits on steel girders through the use of FEM analysis. A RC deck bridge with 4 steel plate girders was used as the model bridge. Our analysis revealed that the stress in the lower flange of exterior girders exceeds that of bridges that have no concrete guard wall when the slits are provided at a long distance from each other.
