Impact of train-induced vibration on railway cable-stayed bridges fatigue evaluation

Under repetitive heavy train traffic, railway steel truss bridges tend to have many fatigue related performance issues, especially at welded joints. Accurate estimation of the stress history at critical locations of welded joints under vehicle loading is important for joint fatigue design. Traditionally, vehicle loads were treated as moving static loads without considering their dynamic effects. In this study, a numerical procedure was introduced to incorporate the effect of dynamic response of the train–bridge coupled system on nodal fatigue damage. The proposed approach employs a two-level modelling scheme which combines dynamic analysis for the full train-bridge system and detailed stress analysis at the joint. Miner rule was used to determine the cumulative fatigue damage at critical locations on the welded joint. A sensitivity analysis was conducted for different train loading configurations. It was determined that dynamic vibration negatively influences fatigue life. The calculated cumulative damage at investigated locations can more than the damage estimated using only static moving load method.