ABSTRACT
In accordance with the aging of steel structures, fatigue of metals becomes a serious problem and countermeasures are required, because fatigue crack may lead a structure to catastrophic breakdown. “Crack growth arrester or retardation system”, developed as a versatile and high performance construction method against fatigue crack growth, by using arrester to close fatigue crack and reduce stress concentration at the fatigue crack tip. Arrester was applied to CT (Compact Tension) specimen and the steel bridge deck mockup, in order to verify performance of the system and to investigate the range of application. According to the result of fatigue test using CT specimen, fatigue crack growth rate of the specimen with arrester was 2~10 times lower than that of specimen without arrester, and the threshold value of apparent stress intensity factor range was 10~20MPa√m higher than that of specimen without arrester. Finite element analysis was also carried out to presume the effect of arrester in a quantitative way. Finally, the arrester was applied to the fatigue crack which was introduced in the steel bridge deck mockup. Without arrester, fatigue crack extended in accordance with the increase of loading cycles, on the other hand, fatigue crack growth stopped after con-struction of arrester.
