Tests of Large Girders Treated To Enhance Fatigue Strength

Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Takamori ◽  
John W. Fisher

Two large-scale fatigue test studies of plate girders are reported on. One study involved a series of coverplated bridge girders with small fatigue cracks that were retrofitted in 1976 as described in NCHRP Report 206. The second study involved plate girders fabricated from HPS-485W (HPS-70W) steel with welded attachments. The Category E’ coverplated beams that were removed from the I-95 Yellow Mill Pond Bridge in 1997 had been retrofitted in 1976 by either air hammer peening or gas tungsten arc (GTA) remelting. All details had small fatigue cracks at the time of retrofit. No further fatigue cracking was observed at the coverplate ends after 20 years of service and an estimated 56 million truck passages. The beams were tested at a stress range of 69 MPa (10 ksi). Cracks developed from the root of the transverse end weld and propagated through the weld throat. The fatigue resistance of the treated weld toe details improved to Category C except for one GTA-remelted detail, which exceeded Category D. Another study was carried out on large-scale HPS-485W plate girders with as-welded and ultrasonic-impact treatment (UIT) details. UIT was applied to the weld toe of transverse stiffeners welded to the web and flanges (Category C) and to coverplated ends (Category E’). The as-welded details cracked at their expected fatigue resistance. The UIT transverse stiffeners improved to Category B fatigue resistance, whereas the UIT coverplated details improved to Category C fatigue resistance.

Author(s):  
Peter Y. Wang ◽  
Maria E. Garlock ◽  
Theodore P. Zoli ◽  
Spencer E. Quiel

<p>Steel plate girders are used extensively in buildings and bridges. Given shear rarely governs, minimizing web thickness is desirable. However, web slenderness can enable shear buckling and fatigue problems. The traditional strategy is to use welded transverse stiffeners; yet transversely-stiffened girders are prone to fatigue cracks and difficult to fabricate at high slenderness ratios. Thus, AASHTO currently limits web slenderness to 150. Alternatively, corrugated web girders overcome these deficiencies but require robotic welding for the web-to-flange weld. Corrugated webs are also limited to small web thicknesses (6mm or less) and girder depths (less than 1.5m) given web forming limits. The authors propose an alternative web geometry, introducing low-frequency sinusoids (LFS) in the web along its length. The LFS web can be welded to the flanges using semi-automatic weld techniques currently employed by bridge fabricators. The reduced web curvature allows for a wider array of web forming techniques with much larger plate thicknesses. In a finite element study, web geometric properties such as sinusoidal frequency and amplitude are varied. Results demonstrate a significant increase in the elastic shear buckling load and ultimate strength using a wavelength equal to the depth of the girder. The results of this study show promise for improved girder durability paired with material efficiency, demonstrating that a web product with constant amplitude and wavelength could work for various girder depths up to 3m and above.</p>


Metals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyuan Ma ◽  
Ti Zhou ◽  
Hong Zhou ◽  
Geng Chang ◽  
Benfeng Zhi ◽  
...  

Nodular iron brake discs typically fail due to serious thermal fatigue cracking, and the presence of graphite complicates the repair of crack defects in ductile iron. This study presents a novel method for remanufacturing ductile iron brake discs based on coupled bionics to repair thermal fatigue cracks discontinuously using bio-inspired crack blocking units fabricated by laser remelting at various laser energy inputs. Then, the ultimate tensile force and thermal fatigue crack resistance of the obtained units were tested. The microhardness, microstructure, and phases of the units were characterized using a digital microhardness meter, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. It was found that the units without defects positively impacted both the thermal fatigue resistance and tensile strength. The unit fabricated at a laser energy of 165.6 − 15 + 19 J/ mm 2 had sufficient depth to fully close the crack, and exhibited superior anti-cracking and tensile properties. When the unit distance is 3 mm, the sample has excellent thermal fatigue resistance. In addition, the anti-crack mechanism of the units was analysed.


Author(s):  
John W. Fisher

Fatigue cracking was seldom found in welded highway and railroad bridges from the time of their introduction in the 1950s until the late 1960s. The fatigue design specifications used in that era were developed from a limited knowledge base and largely with small-scale specimens that simulated welded details. During the AASHO Road Test in 1960 fatigue cracks were observed to develop in cover-plated steel bridge beams as a result of the heavy loads and high stress ranges. This observation subsequently resulted in a series of experimental studies supported by NCHRP starting in 1967. The laboratory studies with full-scale details were designed to evaluate the significance of many factors thought to influence fatigue resistance, including loading history (and associated stress states including residual stresses), type of steel, design details, and quality of fabrication. These studies indicated that small-scale specimens overestimated fatigue resistance and that only the stress range for a given detail was critical. As a result fatigue resistance design provisions in use since the 1950s were inadequate and overly optimistic, particularly at longer lives, because the assumption of a fatigue limit of 2 million cycles proved to be incorrect. The results of laboratory studies with full-size specimens and their impact on changing the concept of fatigue design and the bridge fatigue design provisions used for highway and railroad bridges today are reviewed. During the 1970s and 1980s fatigue cracking associated with low-fatigue-strength details (Categories E and E′), such as cover plates and lateral gusset plates, increased. Cracks were also found in transverse groove welds, particularly in attachments such as longitudinal stiffeners, gusset plates and even flange splices. These groove weld cracks generally occurred because large defects were inadvertently fabricated into the welded joint. The occurrence of these cracks was found to be predictable and in agreement with the laboratory fatigue resistance results. The 1970s also exposed an unexpected source of cracking due to the distortion of small web gaps that were frequently used in welded bridge structures. Web gap cracking continues to develop in a wide range of bridge types. It is the source of most fatigue cracks in steel bridges. Existing bridges that are susceptible to fatigue cracks or that develop fatigue cracks at primary details or from web gap distortion are easily repaired or retrofitted to ensure long-term performance. Examples of such repairs are reviewed. The future is bright for welded bridges because the knowledge base and current design provisions make it possible to design and build fatigue-resistant bridges.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (20) ◽  
pp. 63-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Rychlik ◽  
Krzysztof Ligier

This paper discusses the method used to identify the process involving fatigue cracking of samples on the basis of selected vibration signal characteristics. Acceleration of vibrations has been chosen as a diagnostic signal in the analysis of sample cross section. Signal characteristics in form of change in vibration amplitudes and corresponding changes in FFT spectrum have been indicated for the acceleration. The tests were performed on a designed setup, where destruction process was caused by the force of inertia of the sample. Based on the conducted tests, it was found that the demonstrated sample structure change identification method may be applied to identify the technical condition of the structure in the aspect of loss of its continuity and its properties (e.g.: mechanical and fatigue cracks). The vibration analysis results have been verified by penetration and visual methods, using a scanning electron microscope.


Water Policy ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-212
Author(s):  
J. Lisa Jorgensona

This paper discusses a series of discusses how web sites now report international water project information, and maps the combined donor investment in more than 6000 water projects, active since 1995. The maps show donor investment:  • has addressed water scarcity,  • has improved access to improvised water resources,  • correlates with growth in GDP,  • appears to show a correlation with growth in net private capital flow,  • does NOT appear to correlate with growth in GNI. Evaluation indicates problems in the combined water project portfolios for major donor organizations: •difficulties in grouping projects over differing Sector classifications, food security, or agriculture/irrigation is the most difficult.  • inability to map donor projects at the country or river basin level because 60% of the donor projects include no location data (town, province, watershed) in the title or abstracts available on the web sites.  • no means to identify donor projects with utilization of water resources from training or technical assistance.  • no information of the source of water (river, aquifer, rainwater catchment).  • an identifiable quantity of water (withdrawal amounts, or increased water efficiency) is not provided.  • differentiation between large scale verses small scale projects. Recommendation: Major donors need to look at how the web harvests and combines their information, and look at ways to agree on a standard template for project titles to include more essential information. The Japanese (JICA) and the Asian Development Bank provide good models.


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 1249
Author(s):  
Yixun Wang ◽  
Yuxiao Luo ◽  
Yuki Kotani ◽  
Seiichiro Tsutsumi

The existing S-N curves by effective notch stress to assess the fatigue life of gusset welded joints can result in reduced accuracy due to the oversimplification of bead geometries. The present work proposes the parametric formulae of stress concentration factor (SCF) for as-welded gusset joints based on the spline model, by which the effective notch stress can be accurately calculated for fatigue resistance assessment. The spline model is also modified to make it applicable to the additional weld. The fatigue resistance of as-welded and additional-welded specimens is assessed considering the geometric effects and weld profiles. The results show that the error of SCFs by the proposed formulae is proven to be smaller than 5%. The additional weld can increase the fatigue life by as great as 9.4 times, mainly because the increasing weld toe radius and weld leg length lead to the smaller SCF. The proposed series of S-N curves, considering different SCFs, can be used to assess the welded joints with various geometric parameters and weld profiles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saskia Meijboom ◽  
Martinette T. van Houts-Streppel ◽  
Corine Perenboom ◽  
Els Siebelink ◽  
Anne M. van de Wiel ◽  
...  

AbstractSelf-administered web-based 24-h dietary recalls (24 hR) may save a lot of time and money as compared with interviewer-administered telephone-based 24 hR interviews and may therefore be useful in large-scale studies. Within the Nutrition Questionnaires plus (NQplus) study, the web-based 24 hR tool Compl-eat™ was developed to assess Dutch participants’ dietary intake. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance of this tool against the interviewer-administered telephone-based 24 hR method. A subgroup of participants of the NQplus study (20–70 years, n 514) completed three self-administered web-based 24 hR and three telephone 24 hR interviews administered by a dietitian over a 1-year period. Compl-eat™ as well as the dietitians guided the participants to report all foods consumed the previous day. Compl-eat™ on average underestimated the intake of energy by 8 %, of macronutrients by 10 % and of micronutrients by 13 % as compared with telephone recalls. The agreement between both methods, estimated using Lin's concordance coefficients (LCC), ranged from 0·15 for vitamin B1 to 0·70 for alcohol intake (mean LCC 0·38). The lower estimations by Compl-eat™ can be explained by a lower number of total reported foods and lower estimated intakes of the food groups, fats, oils and savoury sauces, sugar and confectionery, dairy and cheese. The performance of the tool may be improved by, for example, adding an option to automatically select frequently used foods and including more recall cues. We conclude that Compl-eat™ may be a useful tool in large-scale Dutch studies after suggested improvements have been implemented and evaluated.


2019 ◽  
pp. 129-139
Author(s):  
Tamara Mykolayivna Kurach ◽  
Iryna Aleksandrovna Pidlisetskaya

The goal is to develop a tourist interactive map "Landmarks of Bohuslav". The methodology. The methodological and theoretical basis of the study is modern geographical and cartographic science in the field of thematic mapping with the involvement of web-mapping technologies. Results. A large-scale tourist web map of the cultural heritage of the Boguslavsky region - “Sights of Boguslavshchina” was created. Scientific novelty. Approbation of the methodology and technology for the development of interactive large-scale web maps of tourism topics involving the Leaflet JavaScript library. Practical value. An interactive tourist web map of the historical and cultural heritage sites “Sights of Bohuslavshchina” will be published on the website of the health-improving institution of sanatorium-type “Chaika”. Convenient using, visualization, prompt receipt of information will help to increase the attractiveness of tourist Boguslavschina routes.


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5277
Author(s):  
Shiqi Wang ◽  
Huanyun Zhou ◽  
Xianhua Chen ◽  
Minghui Gong ◽  
Jinxiang Hong ◽  
...  

Semi-flexible pavement (SFP) is widely used in recent years because of its good rutting resistance, but it is easy to crack under traffic loads. A large number of studies are aimed at improving its crack resistance. However, the understanding of its fatigue resistance and fatigue-cracking mechanism is limited. Therefore, the semi-circular bending (SCB) fatigue test is used to evaluate the fatigue resistance of the SFP mixture. SCB fatigue tests under different temperature values and stress ratio were used to characterize the fatigue life of the SFP mixture, and its laboratory fatigue prediction model was established. The distribution of various phases of the SFP mixture in the fracture surface was analyzed by digital image processing technology, and its fatigue cracking mechanism was analyzed. The results show that the SFP mixture has better fatigue resistance under low temperature and low stress ratio, while its fatigue resistance under other environmental and load conditions is worse than that of asphalt mixture. The main reason for the poor fatigue resistance of the SFP mixture is the poor deformation capacity and low strength of grouting materials. Furthermore, the performance difference between grouting material and the asphalt binder is large, which leads to the difference of fatigue cracking mechanism of the SFP mixture under different conditions. Under the fatigue load, the weak position of the SFP mixture at a low temperature is asphalt binder and its interface with other materials, while at medium and high temperatures, the weak position of the SFP mixture is inside the grouting material. The research provides a basis for the calculation of the service life of the SFP structure, provides a reference for the improvement direction of the SFP mixture composition and internal structure.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document