FATIGUE DAMAGE ANALYSIS OF WELDED STEEL BRIDGE MEMBERS UNDER TRAFFIC USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD AND DAMAGE MECHANICS

摘要

Fatigue damage accumulation in the steel bridge welded components is significant for the safety of steel bridge members,. This study proposes using finite element method and the damage mechanics theory for precise fatigue damage analysis. The fully coupled finite element fatigue analysis is implemented in the commercial software ABAQUS user interface. As a case for study, the fatigue analysis of the Tsing Ma Bridge critical fatigue damage member is studied using the fully coupled finite element fatigue damage analysis procedure,. The fully uncoupled fatigue damage analysis and the fully coupled damage analysis are performed on the critical fatigue damage members for comparison. The fatigue life obtained from the fully-coupled method has a fewer fatigue life than that obtained from the fully uncoupled method using both the linear Miner's law and the high cycle fatigue damage model.