Title: Fatigue reliability evaluation of short-span concrete bridges under dynamic impacts of stochastic truck loading

Authors: Yuan Luo; Donghaung Yan; Ming Yuan

Addresses: Changsha University of Science and Technology, Hunan, China ' Changsha University of Science and Technology, Hunan, China ' Changsha University of Science and Technology, Hunan, China

Abstract: This study presents an approach for the fatigue stress spectrum simulation of short-span bridges under the dynamic impacts of stochastic traffic loading. This approach is utilised to evaluate the fatigue reliability of existing bridges. Response functions defined by intervals are used to approximate the equivalent fatigue stress range of the bridge. Probability models of the fatigue stress ranges are evaluated with Gaussian mixture models. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated via a case study of a simply supported bridge. The numerical results indicate that the impact effect of vehicle loads on short-span bridge leads to an obvious increase in both the stress range and the number of stress cycles. Both the degradation of the road surface roughness condition and the traffic growth lead to a significant decrease in the fatigue reliability.

Keywords: fatigue reliability; vehicle-bridge coupled vibration; response surface method; stochastic traffic flow; road surface roughness; traffic volume.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRS.2018.092514

International Journal of Reliability and Safety, 2018 Vol.12 No.1/2, pp.103 - 121

Received: 03 Feb 2017
Accepted: 19 Jan 2018
Published online: 23 Jun 2018 *

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