Fatigue stress monitoring and analyses for steel box girder of Runyang Suspension Bridge

Abstract

The monitoring of fatigue stress of steel bridge is a key issue of bridge health monitoring and safety assessment. This paper aims to find out the strain history features of the girder components of Runyang Suspension Bridge (RYSB) under vehicle and environmental loading during its first year of service based on the strain-history data recorded by structural health monitoring system installed in the bridge. The fatigue stress spectrums of steel box girders under normal traffic load, heavy trucks and typhoon loads were studied as well as the correlation between varying strain and temperature based on real-time monitoring of temperature histories. The results show that, monitoring on local strain in health monitoring systems of RYSB can effectively provide the information on fatigue stresses. The range of the equivalent fatigue stress on the monitoring location of the bridge is currently low, mainly due to varying traffic loading and temperature. There exists significant correlation between varying temperature and mean value of fatigue stress. Effect of the passing of heavy trucks on bridge fatigue is quite significant since the value of the cumulative fatigue damage generated by heavy trucks is 10 to 100 times larger than that by normal traffic. Therefore, the effect on fatigue cumulative damage due to heavy trucks or overloaded vehicles needs to be monitored and paid much attention to.

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