In the proposed deck replacement method, existing steel girder and orthotropic steel deck are connected by “Shear Force Transferring Members (SFTMs)” installed between girder web and longitudinal rib discretely. This paper’s object is to investigate the effect of the arrangement of SFTMs (dense/sparse) on the composite action and to clarify the ultimate behavior in the case of sparse SFTMs arrangement. The girder bending experiment exhibites that the denser the SFTMs are arranged along the girder span, the closer complete composite behavior this structure has. Moreover, SFTMs keep their shear resistance after the girder local buckling, which prevents the whole structure from immediamte deterioration of bending resistance.
