Fatigue Performance of Orthotropic Steel Decks with FRP Angles: Field Measurement and Numerical Analysis
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 33, Issue 4
Abstract
Rib-to-deck joints in orthotropic steel decks (OSDs) are among the most fatigue-prone details of steel bridges. To improve the fatigue performance of existing bridges with OSDs, a strengthening method using externally bonded fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) angles was proposed and experimentally studied. This study also presents a field investigation of strengthened OSDs with FRP angles. First, on-site strengthening procedures with glass FRP (GFRP) angles were proposed and demonstrated on a long-span suspension bridge. Two-day field strain monitoring indicated that daily equivalent stress ranges (ESR) decreased significantly after strengthening. The strengthening mechanism was further studied through numerical analysis, in which the effective notch stress method and submodel technique were adopted to investigate stress fields of the welded details. The results showed that among the dimensions under investigation, thicker, wider, and longer GFRP angles generally result in better fatigue performance by providing higher additional local stiffness to rib-to-deck joints. Calculation of stress intensity factors at crack tips resulted in similar conclusions to the effective notch stress analysis, and the strengthening effect was found to be more remarkable for deeper cracks.
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Acknowledgments
Support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 51878027, the Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School of Southeast University under Grant No. YBJJ1551, and the Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province under Grant No. KYCX17_0121 is gratefully acknowledged.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 33 • Issue 4 • August 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 6, 2018
Accepted: Dec 20, 2018
Published online: May 31, 2019
Published in print: Aug 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Oct 31, 2019
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