Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by,
Amit H. Varma
May 2, 2003
Michigan Department of Transportation
Conference Room
INTRODUCTION
Some examples of fatigue prone details
Component / Detail Initial Defect or Fatigue Category
Condition
Cover-plated beams Weld toe E
Flange gussets Weld toe E or E
Eyebars Stress corrosion, Forge Initial crack
laps
Longitudinal stiffener Lack of fusion /poor weld Large initial crack
Box girder corner welds Transverse weld Large-initial crack
Coped Members Flame-cut notch Initial defect
Pin Plates Frozen pins Out-of-plane
Transverse stiffeners Shipping and handling Out-of-plane
Diaphragm connection Web gaps Out-of-plane
plates
Gusset plates Lateral bracing Out-of-plane
FUNDAMENTAL FATIGUE OF METALS
Metal fatigue is a well-known phenomenon
Wohler - German engineer fatigue of railroad car axles
Alternating cyclic stresses (even in the elastic range) cause
fatigue failure in metal components or details.
Fatigue crack initiation
Fatigue crack propagation
Brittle fracture
Consider the stress state in the vicinity of the crack tip in a structure
subjected to tensile stresses normal to the plane of the crack
magnitude described by the stress intensity factor KI , which implicitly
accounts for the effects of stress, crack size and geometry, and structure
Stress state in the vicinity of a crack tip loaded in tension
FATIGUE CRACK PROPAGATION
KI can be calculated analytically for various structural
configurations, crack geometries, and loadings
For all cases KI = C s a
KI has units of ksi in
Unstable crack growth occurs when KI
exceeds KIc, which is the critical
stress intensity factor for the material
dN
where, a = flaw or crack size; N = number of fatigue cycles
A and m are material constants
Material A m
Martensitic steels 0.66 x10-8 3.25
Ds dN
da da m
A C a
m
Therefore
ai A ( C a )
m
Ni
dN
A1 Ds N
af
da m
Let A1 = Therefore
ai A( C a )m
1
A1 m
And Ds
N
FATIGUE LIFE
1
Ds A1 m
where, m = 3 for ferrite-perlite steels
N
The constant A1 depends significantly on the value of the initial
flaw or defect ai, which cannot be estimated easily or accurately
Fatigue design load = vehicular live load (LL) due to fatigue design truck
and the corresponding impact factor (IM) and centrifugal force (CE)
Q = hi g i Qi
where, hi = load modifiers, gi = load factor = 0.75 and
The load factor of 0.75 reflects a load level representative of the truck
population with large number of repetitive cycles and fatigue effects.
FATIGUE DESIGN TRUCK
Steel bridges are designed for the live-load (LL) stress range caused
by the fatigue design truck, which has a set distance of 30 ft. between
the 32 kip loads, and is slightly different than the design truck
30-0
The live load stress due to the passage of the fatigue load is approx.
one-half of the heaviest truck expected to cross the bridge in 75 years.
Only one fatigue truck is considered for design irrespective of the
number of design lanes.
No multiple presence of live load and no lane loads are considered.
Dynamic load allowance (IM). The live load stress caused by the
fatigue design truck is to be increased by the dynamic load allowance
factor of 15%
FATIGUE LOADING
The frequency of occurrence of the fatigue design load is estimated
as the single-lane annual daily truck traffic (ADTT)SL
In the absence of better information ADTT)SL can be estimated as
(ADTT)SL = p x ADTT
ADTT = number of trucks per day in one direction averaged over the
design life
Number of Lanes p
available to Trucks
1 1.00
2 0.85
3 or more 0.80
ADTT can be estimated as the limiting value of average daily traffic
multiplied by the fraction of trucks in the traffic
Highway Fraction of trucks
The same fatigue resistance curves are applicable to both redundant and
non-redundant members.
FATIGUE DETAIL CATEGORIES
A Rolled surface B
Cont. welded
B Painted weath. B
E Eyebars E
Cover plates
E
B B
B
LONGITUDINALLY LOADED ATTACHMENTS
End welds End welds not End welds End welds not
Longer is worse
C C
Longer is worse
Groove welded
C D E
C D E
D E
E
TRANSVERSE LOADED ATTACHMENTS
Fillet welded
Welds parallel to direction of stress
D E
E
19 C to 34 C 2
34 C to 51 C 3
BRITTLE FRACTURE CONSIDERATIONS
Fracture-critical member (FCM) is defined as a member with tensile
stress whose failure is expected to cause the collapse of the bridge
material in a FCM is required to exhibit greater toughness and ability to absorb
more energy without fracture than a non-fracture critical member
The c-to-c pitch of shear connectors shall not exceed 24.0 in. and
shall not be less than six stud diameters
FATIGUE OF SHEAR CONNECTORS
The fatigue resistance of an individual shear connector
Zr = a d2 > 2.75 d2
where a = 34.5 2.28 Log N
d = diameter of stud and N = number of cycles
Stud shear connectors shall not be closer that 4.0 d c-to-c transverse
to the longitudinal axis of the supporting member
The clear distance between the edge of the top flange and the edge of
the nearest shear connector shall not be less than 1.0 in.
The clear depth of concrete cover over the tops of the shear
connectors should not be less than 2.0 in.
Shear connectors should penetrate at least 2.0 in. into the deck
FATIGUE DESIGN
30-0
Cover plate (narrower than the flange) with flange thickness < 0.8 in.
Therefore, Category E detail
From the table: A = 11.0 x 108 and (DF)TH = 4.5 ksi
Therefore, (DF)n = [(11.0 x 108)/(3.723 x 108)]1/3 = 1.43 ksi,
but (DF)n > (4.5) = 2.25 ksi
Therefore, the constant amplitude fatigue threshold controls
The applied fatigue stress range (Df) must be < 2.25 ksi
The cover-plate can be curtailed to the point where the stress range in the
steel beam alone is less than 2.25 ksi !!!!!!