Cracking induced failure of old riveted steel beams

The structural integrity of a cracked old steel beam made of riveted plates and angles is examined in this work. A structural safety zone is delimited in terms of combinations of load and cracking damage, and a structural integrity assessment diagram is constructed. The different failure modes that compete with the fracture of the cracked component to produce the collapse of the beam are identified, and criteria to prevent them are stated and used for constructing the assessment diagram. The presence of a cracked component in the beam makes the riveted joints transmit forces between the joined components, and the typical failure modes of a riveted connection (shearing of the rivet shanks, crushing of the contact surface at the joints, and tensile necking of the net cross-sections) are added to the fracture of the cracked component as the potential mechanisms of collapse of the beam.