Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This paper is concerned with fatigue damage evaluation of railway truss bridges in Thailand, which have been in service for more than 60 years by using the deterministic approach. The dynamic strain measuring system was installed on selected bridge members to record the actual strain histories induced by the passing trains. The fatigue damages of all bridge members are evaluated based on Palmgren-Miner damage rule and the S-N curves of the stress ranges from field strain measurement of daily train traffic. For the members that their field strains were directly not monitored, the finite element analysis has been employed to estimate their stress ranges. The finite element models of the bridges are verified with the stress data obtained from the field load test of a locomotive. It is found that the vertical and diagonal members of the railway bridges appear to have the most fatigue damage risk whereas the lower chord and floor beams have the lowest estimated fatigue damage potential.

Keywords

fatigue damage evaluation fatigue test field measurement finite element analysis steel bridges

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

AASHTO (2002). Standard Specifications for Highway Bridges, 17th Ed., American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C, USA.

AREAMA (2003). Manual for Railway Engineering, Steel Structures, American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association, MD, USA.

Anzai

and Endo

(1979). “On-site indication of fatigue damage under complex loading”, International Journal of Fatigue, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 40–57.

Byers

W.G.

Marley

M.J.

Mohammadi

Nielsen

R.J.

and Sarkani

(1997). “Fatigue reliability reassessment procedures state-of-the-art paper”, Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, Vol. 123, No. 3, pp. 271–276.

Cho

H.N.

Lim

J.K.

and Choi

H.H.

(2001). “Reliability-based fatigue failure analysis for causes assessment of a collapsed steel truss bridge”, Engineering Failure Analysis, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 311–324.

Di Battista

J.D.

Adamson

D.E.J.

and Kulak

G.L.

(1998). “Fatigue strength of riveted bridge members”, Journal of Structural Engineering, ASCE, Vol. 124, No. 7, pp. 792–797.

Downing

S.D.

and Socie

D.F.

(1982). “Simple rainflow counting algorithms” International Journal of Fatigue, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 31–40.

Ermopoulos

and Spyrakos

C.C.

(2006). “Validated analysis and strengthening of a 19^th century railway bridge”, Engineering Structure, Vol. 28, No. 5, pp. 783–792.

Eurocode 3 (1992). Design of Steel Structures, European Committee for Standardization, Brussels, Belgium.

10.

Fisher

J.W.

Mertz

D.R.

and Zhong

(1983). Steel Bridge Members Under Variable Amplitude Long Life Fatigue Loading, NCHRP Report 267, National Academy Press, Washington DC, USA.

11.

Hai

D.T.

(2006). “Current status of existing railway bridges in Vietnam: An overview of steel deficiencies”, Journal of Constructional Steel Research, Vol. 62, No. 10, pp. 987–994.

12.

Kim

S.H.

Lee

S.W.

and Mha

H.S.

(2001). “Fatigue reliability assessment of an existing steel railroad bridge”, Engineering Structure, Vol. 23, No. 10, pp. 1203–1211.

13.

Lee

S.B.

(1996). “Fatigue failure of welded vertical members of a steel truss bridge”, Engineering Failure Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 103–108.

14.

Z.X.

Chan

T.H.T.

and Zheng

(2003). “Statistical analysis of online strain response and its application in fatigue assessment of a long-span steel bridge”, Engineering Structures, Vol. 25, No. 14, pp. 1731–1741.

15.

Miner

M.A.

(1945). “Cumulative damage in fatigue”, Transaction of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 67A, pp. 159–164.

16.

Mohammadi

Guralnick

S.A.

and Polepeddi

(1998). “Bridge fatigue life estimation from field data”, Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 128–133.

17.

Moses

Schilling

C.G.

and Raju

K.S.

(1986). Fatigue Evaluation Procedures for Steel Bridge, NCHRP Report 299, National Academy Press, Washington DC, USA.

18.

Sartor

R.R.

Culmo

M.P.

and Dewolf

J.H.

(1999). “Short-term strain monitoring of bridge structures”, Journal of Bridge Engineering, ASCE, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 157–164.

Fatigue Damage Evaluation of Railway Truss Bridges from Field Strain Measurement

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References