ABSTRACT
Due to its light weight and cost-effectiveness, orthotropic steel deck bridges are one of the most popular alternatives for bridges constructed in urban and metropolitan areas in Japan. However, orthotropic decks still present fatigue problems that must be solved to assure their durability. The present study focuses on rib-to-crossbeam connections, in particular, on the welded joints in the cutout area at the bottom of trough-ribs, where a great number of the fatigue cracks has been reported. Therefore, a new fatigue retrofit method was proposed for the cutout area of rib-to-crossbeam connections in orthotropic decks with trough-rib and executed in a bridge, in which field tests, including dynamic loading tests and stress measurements under service load, were carried out, before and after the execution of the retrofitting works, to verify its effectiveness.
