Fatigue Assessment of Full-Scale Retrofitted Orthotropic Bridge Decks

Sofia Teixeira de Freitas, Henk Kolstein, Frans Bijlaard
2017 Journal of Bridge Engineering  
Full-scale fatigue tests were performed on two retrofitted orthotropic bridge decks (OBD). 12 The retrofitting systems consist of adding a second steel plate on the top of the existing deck. The aim is 13 to reduce the stresses at the fatigue sensitive details and therefore extend the fatigue life of the OBD by 14 stiffening the existing deck plate. Two retrofitting systems have been studied. The bonded system 15 consists in bonding a second steel plate to the existing deck by vacuum infusing a
more » ... thin adhesive layer (2 16 mm) between the two steel plates. The sandwich system consists in bonding the second steel plate 17 through a thick polyurethane core (15 mm). The aim of the study was to assess the fatigue performance 18 of both retrofitting. No fatigue damage was detected in the retrofitting layers during fatigue tests after 3 19 million cycles of wheel load. The stresses close to the deck-plate-to-stiffener welds reduce by at least 20 55% when using the bonded steel plates system and 45% when using the sandwich steel plates system. 21 Both systems proved to have sufficient fatigue life to withstand traffic wheel loads running on 22 orthotropic bridge decks and help extending the fatigue life of the existing OBD. 23 24
doi:10.1061/(asce)be.1943-5592.0001115 fatcat:veq6kczs45gjjhok4hgitlcbvy