This paper’s aim is to assess the rail wear evolution of railway tracks under mixed traffic conditions for sharp curves. Field investigations were conducted over a period of five years, at 800 points on a rail track, for two curves that underwent maintenance interventions: sleeper and rail replacements during measurements. Lateral and vertical wear measurements were monitored with mechanical instruments, and Prokon and Sap simulations were performed in order to determine the bearing capacity of the rail at different stages of wear. The results obtained after five years of investigation show wear speed propagation on the outer rail of small-radius curves as well as the bending moments and admissible stress variation. At more than 18% of the studied points, lateral wear exceeded the maximum admissible limit, showing a faster propagation speed on the outer rail compared to the vertical wear rate.

The term of shear lag is related to the discrepancies between the approximate theory of the bending of beams and their real behaviour, and it refers to the increases of the bending stresses near the flange-to-web junctions, and the corresponding decreases in the flange stresses away from these junctions. In the case of wide flanges of plated structures, shear lag caused by shear strains, which are neglected in the conventional theory, may be taken into account by a reduced flange width concentrated along the webs of the steel girders. The effects of the shear lag, plate buckling and interaction of both effects should be taken into account at the ultimate, serviceability or fatigue limit states in the design of structures with wide flanges. In EN 1993-1-5, the concept of taking shear lag into account is based on the effective ^s width of the flange which is defined in order to have the same total normal force in the gross flange subjected to the real transverse stress distribution as the effective flange subjected to a uniform stress. Some aspects concerning the shear lag phenomenon and a design example of effective ^s width calculation and the shear lag effects for a steel pedestrian bridge deck are presented in this paper.

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For average spans, the composite structures such as steel plate beams or box sections, with a monolithic or prefabricated concrete slab at the top flange used for the construction of footbridges are nowadays widely utilized. The use of composite orthotropic deck can be an advantageous solution, taking into account the following consideration: increases the structure’s stiffness to bending and torsion; the steel deck has the function of bracing and ensures the lateral stability; the parameters regarding the dynamic behaviour of the structure are improved. In the case study, a working example and an analysis for the structure of a footbridge built over the Someș River in city of Cluj-Napoca are presented.