A method for the fatigue evaluation of riveted steel girder railway bridges
"A significant portion of North America's aging infrastructure consists of railway bridges of riveted steel girder type construction. There is concern about this population of bridges because of the nature of today's current loading environment and the fact that many of these bridges will attain or exceed their projected design lives in the near future. Over the last 30 years, train consists have become heavier and faster. To facilitate the prediction of how much longer riveted steel girder railway bridges may last, a new method for fatigue evaluation has been developed. A large-scale instrumentation program was begun in 1988 with the goal of collecting loading and response spectra for typical riveted girder railway bridges. The collected data were used to develop the new fatigue evaluation method or fatigue model. The fatigue model is a ""direct"" method of fatigue evaluation and has a basis in reliability theory. The model is intended for implementation on a computer. Several parametric studies were conducted using the fatigue model. An important outcome of these studies was an evaluation of the possible future remaining lives of typical riveted steel girder railway bridges."
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign