PSI - Issue 70

Anil Pradeep Konda et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 70 (2025) 153–160

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5.2. Castellated Girder: 5mm Cut The castellated girder, shown in Figure 5(a), is evaluated by introducing the same cut as depicted in Figure 4(a), extending across the full width of the bottom flange. The damage assessment for the single-damage scenario is

Fig. 5: Damage Assessment (a) Castellated Girder, (b) Deflections and (c) Element Damage Severity

presented in Figure 5. Interestingly, there is only a 1 % difference in the severity of element damage between the steel niplate girder and the Castellated girder. Consequently, weld failure in castellated girders is examined in the next section.

5.3. Castellated Girder: Weld Failure

The weld failure in the castellated beam was intentionally induced by removing the ‘tie’ constraint in the region where the web posts were connected to form a full-depth girder, as illustrated in Fig. 3. A web post located between 2 m and 3 m along the bea m was specifically selected to initiate the weld failure. The damage assessment of the Castellated girder in case of single weld failure is presented in Figure 6.

Fig. 6: Damage Assessment of Castellated Girder (a) Deflections, (b) Deflection Change, (c) Relative Deflection Change, (d) Damage Severity Consistency and (e) Element Damage Severity

The deflections resulting from weld failure exhibit distinct behaviour, leading to negative deflection changes before the onset of damage, as shown in Fig. 6(b). This, in turn, resulted in erratic variations in the relative deflection change before damage, as evidenced in Fig. 6(c). Consequently, only the post-damage DSC values were considered in calculating the element damage severity presented in Fig. 6(e). Based on these observations, the authors intend to investigate a double-damage scenario involving both a weld failure and a crack.