Fatigue cracks in the stiffener-to-deck plate connections of orthotropic bridge decks, initiating from the weld toe or root and propagating into the stiffener or weld throat, are experimentally and numerically studied. A statistical analysis of the structural stress is carried out using the experimental data. Automatic welded specimens show a significantly higher fatigue resistance than manual welded ones for both details of the study. Including results in the literature, the characteristic fatigue resistances appear larger than the values in current standards and range between 100 and 160 MPa. A proposal for the fatigue resistance values is given for design purposes. The effective notch stress, averaged strain energy density factor, and fracture mechanics methods are employed to study the sensitivity of the weld toe and root cracks for different (geometrical) variations, such as the lack of weld penetration. Among them, the fracture mechanics method agrees best with the experimental data. With the increase of weld penetration ratios from 75% to 100%, the fracture mechanics predicted fatigue resistances remain approximately equal for the weld toe cracks and increase for the weld root cracks.

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Steel Orthotropic Bridge Decks (OBDs) are widely used in long-span and movable bridges. Fatigue resistance analysis plays an important role in the design or assessment of OBDs. One possible fatigue failure is the crack initiating from the weld root of stiffener-to-deck plate connections at crossbeams. A full-scale experimental investigation in this study using a 20 mm thick deck plate with a dimension of 9.4 m × 5.1 m, including three crossbeams, represents the modern designed OBDs. The experiments show an arrest of crack propagation with a final crack depth of approximately 75% of the deck plate thickness. On the contrary, through thickness cracks develop in deck plates of 10 or 12 mm. Hot spot stress based fatigue detail categories (DC) using various failure criteria derived from the tests. Analysis with the effective notch stress shows that the DC has low sensitivity to the amount of weld penetration. The results of analyses with the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM), employed to analyse the fatigue crack propagation path and crack arrest, are in line with the experimental study.

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Steel Orthotropic Bridge Decks (OBDs) are widely used in the superstructures of movable and long-span bridges. There is a high concentration of stress at many welded connections, which are governing the fatigue performance of OBDs. The fatigue behaviour of the lower end of weld in crossbeam-to-stiffener connection with cut-outs is studied from multiple experimental results obtained from a 48m2 full-scale specimen, as well as finite element simulations. The fatigue resistance of the detail is recommended based on 8 experiments reported in the current study and experiments in the literature using the hot spot stress method. The influence of the load location on the hot spot stress is analysed. The effective notch stress method is used to evaluate the fatigue resistance with different weld profiles.@en

This study derives the fatigue resistance of welded details in orthotropic decks using structural stress (hot-spot stress where possible) based on tests described in literature and tests by the authors. The data are supported with linear elastic fracture mechanics simulations. Details covered are the rib to deck weld, the crossbeam to deck weld and the deck butt weld. High fatigue resistances are found, caused by favourable loading modes (bending and compression) and reduced driving force with the growth of cracks. The technical specification TS 1993-1-901, part of the new generation of Eurocodes, is based on the results of this study.

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