Fatigue evaluation of riveted railway bridges through global and local analysis

This paper presents an overview of recent research efforts by the authors and co-workers on the fatigue assessment of old metallic railway bridges. The investigation focuses on the behaviour of riveted stringer-to-cross-girder connections in a typical, short-span bridge. A generic methodology, which is based on nominal stresses and the S–N method, is presented first, followed by a more detailed analysis using a recently developed fatigue assessment theory, which is based on local stress distributions. The discussion is made within a deterministic as well as a probabilistic context and typical results are presented in terms of fatigue damage and remaining fatigue life.