Numerical Simulation of the Total Service Life Time of Steel Constructions Including Fracture Mechanic Concepts

The assessment of the total service life of steel constructions shall gain importance in the near future due to the increasing significance of building preservation and building modernization. The main cause for failure of existing structural steel constructions under cyclic loading effects is material fatigue. Most steel constructions are however failure tolerant. For economic reasons, this behavior can be considered by including the crack propagation phase into the assessment. In this contribution newly developed software tools and the results of some executed simulations of the total lifetime on existing structures will be presented.