Experimental study on the influence of patch load length on steel plate girders

An experimental study considering the behavior and ultimate strength of longitudinally unstiffened and stiffened I-steel plate girders reinforced by a single longitudinal stiffener subjected to patch loading is presented. The study represents an extension of the previous experimental investigation (Markovic and Kovacevic, 2019) [1] (N. Markovic, S. Kovacevic, Influence of patch load length on plate girders. Part I: Experimental research, J. Constr. Steel Res. 157 (2019), 207–228) in which we considered a different girder width. The main objective of this study is to elucidate and systematically investigate the influence of patch load length and web panel aspect ratio (changing the girder width) on the ultimate strength and behavior of longitudinally unstiffened and stiffened I-steel plate girders. The experimentally obtained patch load resistances are juxtaposed with ultimate loads available in the literature and determined by the design standard EN 1993-1-5.