With the myriad of commercially available finite element analysis (FEA) software packages in industry, solutions to relatively complex problems have become more readily attainable for the engineer; making way for the realization of many of the innovative structures seen throughout today's infrastructure. While it may be assumed that most commercially available FEA software packages will arrive at an accurate solution for a given, well posed linear-elastic small displacement problem, an assumption which cannot be made is that the user of the software will always construct an appropriate model for the given analysis context. That being said, concern has been expressed with regard to the applicability and accuracy of a more simplistic grillage analysis technique (current industry standard) when compared with a full three-dimensional shell finite element analysis. Employing the aforementioned modeling approaches to a longitudinally skewed, steel I-girder bridge, analyses of these models are carried out using the commercially available FEA software package, ADINA. Comparisons are then made between the modeling approaches; the results of which follow in this thesis.
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