Orthotropic steel bridge deck (OSD) has been widely used in long and medium span bridges. However, traditional OSD with U-ribs is prone to fatigue cracking at the deck-to-rib welded joint. Corrugated steel–concrete composite bridge deck (CSCCBD) composed of corrugated steel plate, concrete layer and perforated plate shear connectors was proposed recently to improve the fatigue performance of the bridge deck. In this paper, comparing of the fatigue performance of OSD and CSCCBD was conducted through finite element (FE) analysis. The results showed that the stress amplitude of deck-to-rib welded joint of CSCCBD was reduced by more than 90 % compared with OSD. The fatigue problem of deck-to-rib welded joints can be solved fundamentally. It is further studied that distribution of fatigue vulnerability details of CSCCBD. The most unfavorable fatigue vulnerability details are located around the diaphragm-to-rib weld. The fatigue life of CSCCBD was evaluated based on the linear cumulative damage theory. Consequently, the effect of diaphragm cut-out on the fatigue performance of CSCCBD was studied. It was found that the diaphragm without cut-out can effectively reduce the stress amplitude caused by vehicles, and increase the earliest fatigue cracking life of details around the diaphragm-to-rib weld from 2.16 years to 43.4 years compared with OSD. Finally, the section form of CSCCBD without cut-out was optimized by response surface method (RSM). It was proved that RSM was adequate for the optimization design of CSCCBD.