Probabilistic S-N Field Assessment for a Notched Plate Made of Puddle Iron From the Eiffel Bridge with an Elliptical Hole

Probabilistic fatigue models are required to account conveniently for several sources of uncertainty arising in the prediction procedures for structural details, such as the scatter in material behaviour. In this paper, a procedure to derive probabilistic S-N fields for structural details [1] is applied to a notched geometry with elliptic central hole made of puddle iron from the Eiffel bridge, based on the local approaches supported by the probabilistic ɛa–N or Smith–Watson–Topper (SWT)–N fields [1,2]. This procedure suggests an extension of the fatigue crack propagation model proposed by Noroozi et al. [3,4] to structural details, in order to cover both the fatigue crack initiation and fatigue crack propagation, based on local strain approaches to fatigue. Both fatigue crack initiation and fatigue crack propagation mechanisms are accounted for in the proposed approach. The numerical results are compared with available experimental S-N fatigue data for the notched plate under consideration.