Fatigue analysis of rib-to-deck joints in steel orthotropic decks of Chongqi Bridge

摘要

Chongqi bridge is the longest-span continuous steel box girder bridge with an orthotropic steel deck in China. Due to the small thickness of both the deck plate and rib wall, the out-of-plane bending moments result in high local flexural stresses causing fatigue cracks to develop at the rib-to-deck joints. Aiming at the fatigue problem of this joint in the orthotropic steel bridge deck plate, the stress amplitude is calculated by FEM and the fatigue properties of rib-to-deck joints was analyzed according to the Eurocode specification under the condition of the single path loading. The results show that rib-to-deck joints have adequate fatigue strength and no fatigue cracks would occur at the location under the given fatigue loads.