
Research and Applications in Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation – Zingoni (Ed.)
© 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-00061-2
Fracture mechanics as an improvement of fatigue life assessment
in orthotropic bridge decks
W. Nagy, H. De Backer & Ph. Van Bogaert
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
ABSTRACT: Orthotropic bridge decks are widely used in long span steel bridges since they are extremely
light weighted when compared with the load carrying capacity. In the past, fatigue life problems have sometimes
been overlooked during design. Nowadays, approaches for fatigue design have reached their limits resulting in
conservati ...