FATIGUE INVESTIGATION OF STEEL-FREE BRIDGE DECK SLABS. IN: CONCRETE: MATERIAL SCIENCE TO APPLICATION

A bridge deck slab is subjected to a very large number of wheels of different magnitudes during its lifetime. There does not seem to be a current method available for establishing the equivalence between the actual wheel population on a bridge and fatigue loads. This paper describes an upper-bound database that was prepared for expected wheel population in Canada by taking the statistics of wheel loads from a Japanese survey. Also described is the fairly simple mathematical model that was developed to determine the number of passes of one wheel load so that the damage induced by it is equivalent to the damage caused by a given number of passes of another load of known magnitude. Two sets of tests on full-scale models of both cast-in-place and precast deck steel-free slabs are described briefly.