Investigation and Verification of the Fatigue Characteristic of the Composite Bridge Deck of a Steel Truss Arch Bridge

Abstract

Steel–concrete composite structures have better economy and technology indexes than those of individual steel and reinforced concrete structures; in the recent years, composite structures are being widely used in bridges. Bridges are frequently subjected to fatigue loads of the vehicles, and hence, it has become increasingly important to investigate the fatigue mechanisms of composite structures—in particular, composite decks. To investigate and verify the fatigue characteristic of novel composite bridge decks on the space grillage system of a steel truss arch bridge, the positive and negative moment region fatigue performances of these composite bridge decks were examined by numerical simulation analysis and model investigation. The ANSYS software package was used to establish a finite element analysis model for the fatigue analysis of such composite bridge decks, and the fatigue performance of the members of the positive and negative bending regions was analyzed under different fatigue loads. Based on the results of the finite element simulation, fatigue tests of the positive and negative bending moment areas corresponding to A and B models were conducted. The results of the test and finite element analysis were compared to verify the validity of the finite element analysis and reliability. Based on the test and analysis results, a design formula for the fatigue performance of the positive and negative moment regions of composite bridge decks is proposed in this paper.