Abstract
Steel bridge decks are prone to fatigue cracking due to long-term wheel loading with high cyclic stress. Fatigue cracks threaten the safety of the bridge and even cause collapse, making crack detection very important. Crack detection with little influence on traffic is difficult due to the pavement. To confirm the feasibility of eddy current testing (ECT) for steel bridge fatigue cracks, the key parameters were calculated. The validity of the parameters was verified preliminarily using the finite-element method. An eddy current movement detection device was set up, and a prefabricated crack test was conducted. The influences of crack size and barrier thickness on the detection signal were discussed. The results show that the sampled signal of magnetic induction intensity is more obvious than voltage, and can be used for crack detection. When the direction of a crack is perpendicular to the direction of detected motion, the amplitude of magnetic induction intensity is positively correlated with the width and depth. Crack detection with a 20-mm-thick barrier layer is possible. The barrier layers weaken the strength of the sampled signal, but the variation law of the intensity with crack parameters is consistent with that of no barrier.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work is sponsored by the National Key Research and Development Project (No. 2017YFE0128700), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu (No. BK20200511), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Jiangsu (No. 2021K564C), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. B200204030 and B210202037). The assistance is gratefully acknowledged.
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Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 37 • Issue 3 • June 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 27, 2022
Accepted: Jan 3, 2023
Published online: Mar 15, 2023
Published in print: Jun 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Aug 15, 2023
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