Abstract:With the rapid development of prefabrication technology in China, the precast concrete small-box girders have been widely used. The middle diaphragm in precast concrete small-box girder greatly increases the on-site construction difficulty, construction time and engineering cost. The necessity of the middle diaphragm is to be further discussed. Based on an engineering example of 30 m+30 m simple-supported variable continuous pre-stressed concrete small-box girder, the virtual beam element method is used to establish a three-dimensional Midas Civil finite element model to analyze the influence of the middle diaphragm on the internal force of the structure. The results show that the installation of the middle diaphragm has little effect on the deflection under live load and bending moment of the side beam of the small-box girder, which makes the thickening place of the side beam web of small-box girder produce the adverse shear force and corresponding torque. Therefore, it is more unfavorable to check the shear and torsion bearing capacity of the minimum section of small-box girder.