Efficient computational approach for fatigue assessment of riveted connections

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative computational approach for fatigue assessment of riveted connections. Such methodology is based on modal superposition principles, submodelling techniques and an elastoplastic post-processing to efficiently evaluate fatigue damaging events considering local geometrical, material and contact nonlinearities. The computational burden, intrinsic to localized detailed numerical analyses, is mitigated implementing a sub-algorithm based on network parallel computing. The developed computational methodology overcomes relevant drawbacks of S–N global approaches suggested in international standards and guidelines and it is an accurate methodology to analyse complex riveted fatigue-critical details, in particular the ones part of large structures, e.g. railway bridges.An idealised riveted beam case-study was investigated and local damage parameters were calculated in reduced computational times. The accuracy of such results proved that the proposed approach allows fully analysing the fatigue life of riveted connections, being applicable to unlimited geometrical configurations submitted to variable loadings.