Steel transverse beam on The Metropolitan Expressway , Japan.
Fatigue cracks were found in welded joints of diaphragms which were under girder supports.
Steel transverse beam with box section.
Fluctuating loads due to highway live load.
Fatigue cracks location are shown in Fig.1.Photograph of Type1-crack is shown in Fig.2.Photograph of Type2-crack and Type5-crack are shown in Fig.3
Causes of fatigue cracks were as follows:
- Stress consentration due to sudden change in rigidity.
- Local deformation at the scallop.
As the temporally-repair,bolted splice plates(Fig.3,Fig.4) were installed on the box webs of the connections.This repairing decreased the measured stress by about 50%,so that these piers could be used safely temporally.But it was needed to remove all the fatigue cracks as the final repair.
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Fig.3 Bolted splice plates
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Fig.4 Construction photograph of bolted splice plates
Hisashi MORIKAWA,Tetsuhiro SHIMOZATO,Chitoshi MIKI and Atsushi ICHIKAWA,STUDY ON FATIGUE CRACKING IN STEEL BRIDGE PIERS WITH BOX SECTION AND TEMPORALLY REPAIRING,Journal of JSCE,No.703/I-59,pp177-183,2002.4(In Japanese)