Experimental investigation of high-cycle fatigue behavior for prestressed concrete box-girders

An experimental study is proposed to investigate the high-cycle fatigue behavior of prestressed concrete box-girders. Special focus is on the shear diagonal cracks in the webs of girders, which is rarely investigated in the open literature. Laboratory fatigue tests were designed and conducted to study the propagation of shear diagonal crack of PC box-girder specimens under cyclic loadings. The development of stirrup strain, propagation characteristics of diagonal crack and the related factors are discussed in detail. A finite element (FE) model for concrete damage of PC box girder under high-cycle fatigue loading is established to investigate the crack propagation behavior. Following this, a model for the calculation of diagonal crack widths of PC box-girder under fatigue loading is proposed based on the experimental observations. The calculation results are compared with experimental data for validation. It is observed that the maximum stirrup strain in crack zone increases 67.9% based on this investigation. The ratio of displacement during the last cycle and that during initial loading can research 40.3% in the current investigation. Finally, several conclusions are drawn based on the proposed study.