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Some special cases exist, however, where behavior is more closely simulated with bearings which are not fully fixed. An example may be a steel box girder connected to superstructure girders through shear-only connections. This allows longitudinal girders to rotate relative to the cross girder, necessitating free DOF assignment within the support condition. The links used to model an integral-girder support condition for a steel-girder deck section composed of shell elements are shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1 - Integral bent links
See Also
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