Fatigue assessment procedure for old riveted road bridges

The paper proposes a comprehensive, experimentally supported fatigue evaluation procedure dedicated to old riveted road bridges. The presented fatigue assessment of old riveted structures, very often of high historical value, is performed according to general assumptions of the Eurocodes [1], [2] and the European Recommendations for Estimation of Remaining Fatigue Life of Existing Steel Structures[3]. Essential input data used for estimation of the fatigue damage accumulation in critical bridge components as well as for prediction of residual lifetime of the whole structure is based on experimental vibration tests performed under real live loads. An original approach related to the experiment-based adaptation of the standardised fatigue loads [1], [2] to the individual operating conditions of each structure is proposed and defined in details. Its practical implementation is described in a case study of a typical historical 80-year-old road bridge crossing the Vistula River in Puławy in Poland. In the previous decades, the bridge despite of its advanced age and historical value was intensively exploited by heavy vehicles. Thus, taking into account the age of the structure and intensity of the traffic crossing the bridge the remaining fatigue resistance of the bridge critical members was evaluated by means of the proposed procedure.