Probabilistic fatigue analysis under constant amplitude loading

Abstract Use of a fracture mechanics-based fatigue analysis for bridge details requires that the random nature of fabrication, crack growth, fatigue-fracture failure and applied loading be properly accounted for. Prior to investigating the last item, the others may be addressed by comparing with corresponding S-N curves, which have been established over many years of experimental code development. In this paper, four typical fatigue-sensitive details are examined under constant amplitude loading and the 50 and 97.7% probability of survival lines are obtained using appropriately selected stress intensity factors, a bi-linear crack growth model and a failure assessment diagram. To this end, various material and geometric parameters are treated as random. The good agreement observed between the fracture mechanics-based S-N curves and their code-specified counterparts, especially for low stress ranges, increases confidence in the model parameters used and hence in subsequent bridge reliability analyses using probabilistic fracture mechanics.

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