System Study on Fatigue Durability of Steel Girder Bridges

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the three main features of engineering fatigue, structural integrity, probabilistic damage, and progressive failure that should be considered with a systematic approach. Nowadays most fatigue assessment of structures is limited to the level of elements, or applies unpractical systematic methods. The chapter proposes a new algorithm called Systems Reliability Blocking Analysis (SRBA) to estimate the fatigue durability of the railway steel girder bridges. The systematic blocks decomposition and subsystems correlation analysis techniques are used instead of detail studies on the local damages and their interactive effects. This chapter presents an example to illustrate the procedure and advantages of this algorithm.