Abstract

Orthotropic steel decks (OSD's) are susceptible to fatigue failure due to cyclic loading. Often fatigue cracks are found in the joint between the deck plate and the trough. Due to the welding process, residual stresses are present in and around the joint. In this paper, the effect of residual stresses on the fatigue crack propagation rate has been evaluated. First, a FE model has been made to predict and validate the residual stress field of the OSD due to welding. The validation of residual stresses is made comparing measured data at the surface of the OSD and over the thickness of the deck flange. The residual stresses are used to subsequently model for a crack propagation analysis based on extended finite element method (XFEM). The fatigue crack simulation including residual stress field shows good correlation compared to the experimental data, while the simulation without residual stress field shows less correlation. The effects of the residual stresses are relatively large as the tensile transversal residual stresses increase the crack propagation, while the tensile longitudinal residual stresses decrease the crack propagation rate. The optimal modelling of the component of residual stresses is investigated.

Highlights

  • IntroductionThe bridge can cope with the increase in stress the cyclic loading of the heavy traffic can cause fatigue cracks in certain joints of the deck

  • Compared to the experimental data, residual stress components S11, S22 and S33 all result in a higher crack propagation rate and result in a lower fatigue life

  • The difference of the Hot-Spot Stress (HSS) at the weld root is 1 MPa, which corresponds to percentage difference of 1 %, further from the root it can be seen that the trend of the RWS analysis is flatter while the trend of R.S

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Summary

Introduction

The bridge can cope with the increase in stress the cyclic loading of the heavy traffic can cause fatigue cracks in certain joints of the deck. The rib-to-deck joint, which is the focus of this MSc-thesis, is susceptible for fatigue cracks around the weld region. These residual stresses can influence the crack propagation through the rib-to-deck joint. In this MSc-thesis the residual stresses due to the welding will be incorporated in the XFEM model. The crack propagation will result in a number of cycles which can represent a fatigue life of the joint This leads to the following research question: What is the effect of residual stresses on the crack propagation of a rib-to-deck joint using XFEM?

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