Fatigue design and retrofit of steel bridges

Abstract This review examines recent work that has been conducted on the fatigue design, inspection and evaluation of steel bridges. Research studies to evaluate load histories and the influence of cyclic loads on fatigue critical details are discussed for both railway and highway bridge structures. Applications of conventional nondestructive testing and inspection methods are reviewed, and new developments in nondestructive evaluation are discussed. Retrofit and repair procedures that have been used for several different structural details are described. A summary of the fatigue strength and performance of several secondary structural bridge elements is presented. Finally, fatigue assessment procedures which have been proposed recently to design and evaluate new and existing bridge structures are presented.