According to the Japanese specifications for highway bridges, the flange and web joints of the girder connections are designed individually and the applied force in the flange joints is derived from the stress in a flange. On the other hand, it is known that the applied force in the flange joint is determined by both the stress in a flange and the stress in the bearable flange area of a part of the web clearance. Furthermore, the design method adopting the bearable flange area was also proposed under the limited girder shape. In this study, FE analysis was conducted to evaluate the effect of the shape of a girder and connecting plates on the moment sharing ratio and the bearable flange area of a part of the web clearance. It is concluded that the bearable flange area of a web is calculated by the geometrical moment of area, the width of the web joint, and the thickness of the web.
