Fatigue Strength Of Connections Research Articles

Conception and Justification of a New Test Setup for Assessment of the Fatigue Strength of Connections Between Precast Railway Bridge Girders

Important investments have been made worldwide in the modernization and construction of railway lines. Plans for new constructions have also been laid out. Recently, precast concrete has been widely employed in the construction of railway bridges and viaducts. Several precast solutions have been applied, namely: I-shaped or U-shaped precast girders and uni-cellular or bi-cellular precast box girders. Regarding the structural scheme in the longitudinal direction, either simple span or continuous decks have been used. In this context, this work aims to contribute to the knowledge about the real performance of these structures through the development of a laboratory tests setup, for the study of this type of structure, focusing on the connection between the precast beams. The setup will be implemented at the Laboratory of Earthquake and Structural Engineering (LESE), several experimental campaigns on the cyclic behaviour of reinforced concrete elements have been carried out.

FATIGUE TEST OF CROSS BEAM CONNECTIONS IN STEEL TRACK GIRDERS FOR STRADDLE-TYPE MONORAIL

A steel elevated guideway for a straddle-type monorail consists of two main track girders and several I-shaped cross beams which connect the two girders. The connection of a cross beam to the track girder is subjected to bending moment, and a number of cycles of the moment reaches a total of 2.8 millions for 70 years.To study on the fatigue strength of the connection, fatigue tests with three-type connection models have been carried out.The present paper reports the fatigue test results and discusses characteristics of the fatigue strength of three-type connections.