Abstract
By means of finite element modeling (FEM) and fatigue experiments, we study the fatigue performance of the rounded welding region between the diaphragm plate and closed rib of orthotropic steel bridge deck in this work. A local sub-model of the rounded welding region from the orthotropic steel bridge deck was developed to analyze the stress distributions. Based on the analysis results we designed the fatigue specimen for the fatigue test of this detailed structure. The fatigue experimental results revealed that the crack initiates from the weld toe of the rounded welding region and the stress concentration at the rounded welding region is the main mechanism of fatigue crack initiation. In addition, we propose three improvements to reduce the stress concentration of the rounded welding region, and the local structure optimization scheme of the diaphragm–rib weld can effectively improve the fatigue resistance of the detailed weld structure.
Highlights
The orthotropic steel bridge decks are used in most of the world’s major long span bridges with an important character of low dead weight
The orthotropic steel deck consists of a deck plate supported in mutually perpendicular directions; all these elements are connected by welded connections
Owing to the cyclic load stress caused by a high number of vehicles, fatigue cracks in orthotropic steel bridges significantly occur at partial-penetration fillet-welded connections [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Summary
The orthotropic steel bridge decks are used in most of the world’s major long span bridges with an important character of low dead weight. Miki [16] used the FE sub-models of rib-to-deck joint derived from 2the global of 16 model of a real bridge to investigate the notch stresses at the weld root, the observations show the increase of the weld penetrationsteel results the higher fatigue resistance. Theinvested effects ofinto concrete cracking on the stress range response of numerous efforts have been the weld fatigue of the orthotropic steel bridge welded joint in rib-to-floor beam can be evaluated through the FE analysis [17]. We attempt to answer this question experimental method and FEM.distributions This is organized as follows:Firstly, weperform design fatigue specimens the simulated stress ofstudy the detailed structures.
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