Fatigue Evaluation of Trough Splice Joints in Orthotropic Steel Decks

Abstract

Fatigue tests for full-scale orthotropic steel decks were conducted to evaluate and validate the fatigue performance of welded and bolted splice joints of longitudinal ribs. The test results indicated that the fatigue properties of two splice joints met the design requirements. The bolted splice joints whose principal tensile stress was largely lower than welded splice joints under the same loading conditions appeared to have superior fatigue resistance to the welded one. No fatigue cracks were detected among all the specimens and the principal tensile stress of measuring points had few changes during the whole fatigue tests. Systematic analysis of test data showed that bolted splice joints appeared to be more reasonable for improving the fatigue performance of longitudinal ribs.